


one slip and i am dead

by woodswit



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 1940's boston, Catholicism, Cousin Incest, Dark!Jon, Drinking, F/M, Gambling, Irish mob AU, Jealousy, Jon Snow and Sansa Stark are Cousins, Mystery/Thriller, Post-World War II, Sexual Tension, Voyeurism, also my usual nonsense, and some new ones, betting on horses, but also me reckoning with a catholic upbringing, but it's still basically all of my usual shenanigans, dark themes, hints of theonsa just for the fun, honestly this is just me writing about hot guys in suits and badass ladies in vintage outfits, mentions of child abuse, sadly could not work the minicooper into this one, this fic can also be known as the return of Jon's forearms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:35:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26598418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodswit/pseuds/woodswit
Summary: She would rather die than ask Jon, of all people, for help. The history between them is gnarled, knotted, dangerous.But Sansa thinks she knows something about the nuns that keep going missing in Boston, and she knows no one else will believe her.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 294
Kudos: 492





	1. that there, that's not me

**Author's Note:**

> This story is concerned, in a non-graphic way, with some of the controversies surrounding the Catholic church.

"Letter for you, Miss Stone." Myranda's voice is teasing and cheery through the bedroom door. "No return address... Sounds like you've got yourself a secret admirer."

Sansa almost drops the hot iron onto the dress, a practical but stylish dove-grey that she copied from a design featured in Vogue, but she doesn't. Sansa Stone is all finely-tuned control. Were an onlooker to peek into her bedroom and watch her porcelain face for some reaction to this news, they would find little evidence of the abject horror that curls round her lungs like choking vines and settles like lead in her limbs. 

Even when no one is watching, Sansa Stone is performing. The most she gives away is a twitch of the elegant, pale hand holding the iron, and a fluttering at her jawline to show she's grinding her teeth—all things that most would miss. 

She sets the iron down safely away from her dress, and takes a moment to smooth her hair and fix a smile on her lips. Sansa Stone has no admirers—she has made certain of that—but, savvy as Myranda is, she cannot understand what this letter means. Of course she would assume it is a man, because she has never lived in the world that Sansa once did.

"An admirer?" Sansa asks innocently as she swings open the door. 

Bing Crosby's croon floats down the hall from one of the other girls' rooms. Myranda, curvaceous and ripe and dressed in berry-colored wool, is posed in the hall with one generous hip jutting as she dangles the letter in front of Sansa, her clever eyes sparkling with delight. 

"I held it up to the light and tried to read it," she admits shamelessly, "but the writing's too fine. Looks like an intellectual to me. Like a professor." She holds up the envelope. "Look at the way your name's written. That's a man's handwriting, alright." 

She holds out the letter between two polished fingers, and Sansa delicately takes it from her, her heart thudding in her throat. If it weren't so horrible, she might have laughed at Myranda's misunderstanding, for she recognizes the handwriting instantly, just like she knew she would, and it's no secret admirer. But nonetheless, she smiles at Myranda's coy look. 

"What a mystery," Sansa says, pocketing the letter in her wool skirt, and Myranda's face falls. 

"Come on, you're not gonna open it now?" Her eyes narrow shrewdly. "Wait a minute. You know who it's from. I can see it in those big blue eyes of yours. You think you can hide your secrets from me, Miss Stone, but I can read you like a book." 

Her tone is as flirtatious as it is when Myranda calls back to the boys who whistle at her sauntering figure on the streets of Charlestown. For Myranda everything is dangerous and fun, delightful and lascivious. Even the hallway around her is clouded with the danger of her too-strong perfume, Fracas, gifted to her by this boy or that. She always smells like tuberose and musk, like a nighttime garden where illicit lovers might meet. 

(Sansa herself wears a single-note rose perfume, one that Myranda insists is 'spinster-y' but one that was selected with care. It is amazing how invisible one can become, if one only dresses like a spinster.)

"I'm sure you can," Sansa says lightly, turning back to her room. Her heart is pounding and she would like to be alone, but it always takes work disentangling herself from Myranda, who is often bored and looking for a bit of trouble. She finds the other girl—woman, really—their age, Jeyne Westerling, to be too twee and dull, and as a result she often knocks on Sansa's door. "Which lucky fellow are you meeting tonight?" she asks, so Myranda doesn't realize she's being dismissed. 

Myranda's dark eyes spark, a sly look curving her lips. 

"Oh, this one is a _good_ one," she confesses, glancing down the hall for the old woman who runs the house, before stepping closer. "If you tell me who sent your love note there, I'll tell you who I'm seeing tonight." She bites her lip like she's got a secret. "Oh, he is _bad_ , Miss Stone," she whispers, slapping Sansa's arm. "Just terrible. I shouldn't be seeing him at all!" 

Sansa has a fair bit of experience with bad men, and they don't make you giggle and bite your lip like that. But she acts shocked for Myranda's sake anyway; it's what is expected of her, after all. 

"No, you mustn't!" she whispers, pretending to look for eavesdroppers, but Myranda only clutches her arm, giggling. _Go away,_ Sansa thinks desperately, and through the lining of her skirt she feels the corner of the envelope scratch along the silk of her slip. _Please go away, I don't care about your boys right now._

"I'm getting out of this stupid house," Myranda hisses. "And it's not gonna just be with any boy, Sansa," she adds, a note of fervor to her low, sultry voice. "It's gonna be with a man. I've met a _man_ , and he's a _bad man_ , but he's a rich man. He's going to take me to Paris and buy me diamonds and furs. He told me so, and he's got the money for it." 

The first prickle of worry raises the hairs on the back of Sansa's neck, but Myranda is detaching herself from Sansa, tossing her dark hair. She winks at Sansa. "Go open your letter and come find me. We can share secrets. I've got a bottle of something absolutely golden that we can split tonight before I head out." 

She saunters down the hall, humming along with Bing Crosby, and Sansa waits just a moment before ducking back into her room, locking the door for good measure, and ripping the letter out of her pocket with unusual fever. 

The letter is addressed to Miss Sansa Stone, in her mother's brisk, sharp writing—the penmanship of someone educated and harried; the penmanship, typically, of a powerful man. Her throat feels tight, and Sansa tugs at the neckline of her cardigan as she opens the letter with trembling hands. 

Of course, she shouldn't be surprised. It's not like she has kept her whereabouts a secret from her family, and Charlestown is not a world away from Southie. Of course her family knows who she is, and where she is. And yet... 

"Oh, forgot to mention," Myranda's voice comes through the door, and Sansa almost crumples the letter in her fist. "A man delivered it. A beautiful man; a dangerous, wild man. Dark and lean, sharp angles. Pretty lips and pretty eyes. He was like smoke. I'd never be able to get ahold of him but he'd fill up my lungs and suffocate me all the same," she muses, provocative and inappropriate as ever. 

She laughs slightly. "Ring any bells to you? He certainly rang mine." 

There is only one man who fits such a description, and Sansa once knew him well. She trains her gaze on the crucifix above her bed. She must not think of him.

"You are absurd," she teases her friend lightly through the door, focusing her winking, spotty vision on the warm, light wood of the crucifix. She feels faint, so she sits on the edge of the bed and runs a thumb along the paper of the letter.

He touched this; only moments ago this letter was grasped in his lovely hand. He walked past this house, slender and dark in his suit; he stood on the sidewalk, rang the bell. Moments ago he would have walked past her window. Does he know which window is hers? Did he see her back in the window as she ironed? 

(And if he did, did it matter to him?) 

Her hands are shaking uncontrollably again so she smooths out the letter on her thighs. Catelyn's code, which she devised to communicate with the other women in their extended 'family,' looks back up at her. Even after years of absence and disuse, Sansa can read the code as easily as if it were English; she has been reading it, after all, as long as she's been reading English. 

_Sansa—_

_Jon Arryn's dead. His funeral will be at Gate of Heaven church. 10 o'clock on Saturday. We will expect you there. Wear your finest._

_Love,_

_Mother_

Sansa closes her eyes. She can detect a hint of Ma Griffe about the paper. Her mother must have given up on Chanel; perhaps it's too common now. Catelyn has always been a little disdainful of women who fuss too much over their appearances, but, on the other hand, she knows the power of a well-tailored skirt suit and a directional, powerful fragrance. She is as much of the mob as her father is; in fact, many men have complained of Catelyn's influence. 

She knew this was coming. She learned of Jon Arryn's death yesterday, and she told herself it would be fine. 

(But it isn't fine. She looked at the back of sweet little Robin's head yesterday in class, bowed with grief. She felt her stomach clench, and looked away. It is not fine at all, for so many reasons.) 

She should have known she would be expected to attend the funeral. After all, even if she goes by a false name and is careful to never set foot in Southie, even if she dyes her red hair slightly darker to hide just how blaringly Irish she looks, even if she attends a different church, she is still Sansa Stark, daughter of the Winterfell gang, the most prominent Irish gang in Boston—in America—and she knows what is expected of her. 

Sansa sets the letter on the twin bed and gets up slowly. She skirts the ironing board and goes to the wardrobe, a shoddily-assembled oak piece that would make her mother gasp for how unworthy it is of her daughter. A small assembly of practical but stylish clothes, all sewn by Sansa and copied from Vogue, from Dior, look back at her. 

But in the very back of the wardrobe there hangs a black dress, the only sign of Sansa Stark in this boarding room. When Sansa touches it, the fine fabric—French, of course—slithers through her fingers. A hatbox sits on the shelf above the rack, bearing the black hat with netting that was made to match it, and a pair of fine black heels—finer and more stylish than anything Sansa Stone, schoolteacher and spinster, would ever own—sit in a papered box on the floor of the wardrobe. 

She could not attend the funeral (she knows that is folly). She could pack a bag and flee for the weekend, hide in Cape Cod. Even if she had to wrap herself in an overcoat and sit on the beach—frigid in the autumn air—for days at a time, she would do it, if she knew it would work. 

She pictures herself for a moment, sitting there in the glaucous morning. She could smoke cigarettes like she never does, the salty wind in her hair. She could think of the war, she could think of the cathedrals in France, their stained glass shattered. She could read poetry like Sansa Stone never does, and get drunk on champagne, and wait out this summons.

But she knows that wherever she goes, Winterfell's men will find her if Winterfell has need of her. They will drag her back. She is bound by a rubber band to her family, and the further she strays from them, the harder she will snap back into their fold if they so choose. It is only her father's tolerance and her mother's love that allow Sansa, the eldest daughter, to shirk her duty to the family like she has chosen to. 

(They do not know why she has chosen this path; they have never questioned it.)

(She is both relieved and devastated that they never have.)

(She is holding a secret like a coiled snake, holding onto it so that it cannot bite anyone else; praying it does not bite her.)

Sansa fists the French fabric in her hand and then lets go. The cool, slippery fabric slips back like water, like she never touched it at all; like Sansa Stone has made no impression upon Sansa Stark, no matter how hard she's tried. There will be no poetry, no clandestine champagne, no glaucous morning with an overcoat and a cigarette. She cannot ignore this summons, she cannot fight it. 

It looks like Sansa Stark is returning to Southie. 

* * *

The cab stops in front of the enormous church. Romanesque arches and sandstone loom over her. Gates of Heaven church was such a fixture for so much of her life that the normalcy of pulling up to it dashes her sense of dread. It feels so normal to be pulling up to this church, as she has thousands of times throughout her life, even though there is nothing normal about this moment. 

But when she gets out of the cab, the dread and horror return like a slap, and it is only due to her pristine self-control that Sansa does not sway or stumble in her tall black heels. Clumps of people, all in wealthy elegant black, gather on the sandstone steps, exchanging somber greetings. They are not as showy as the Italians, of course—especially not while her father leads the gang—but everyone has dressed in their finest for this funeral mass. Catelyn is not the only one who appreciates the power of fine tailoring. Eddard is more subtle about it, but his suits are custom just like the Italians' are.

She scans the groups of people, looking for someone she knows, but of course, the Starks will not have arrived yet. They will be on the way, entering last, in glossy black cars, dressed all in black. Powerful and untouchable; tailored and dark. They come from such a sweet land, but they are a harsh, dangerous people. Sweet like sunshine to her, even now, but jagged and cold to unfamiliar hands. Everyone in Boston knows better than to cross the Starks. Even the Lannisters do not dare. Eddard Stark has made sure of it, and one day her brother, Robb Stark, will make sure, too. 

"So much tragedy," one woman says, the faint curl of Ireland around her words. "Another Sister gone."

"So young, too. She'd only just entered the convent."

Sansa can hear the faint throb of the organ as she grips her black purse in her gloved hands, her black netting creating a haze around her vision. For now, no one notices her, so she takes her opportunity and slips into the church. She cannot listen to the rest of their conversation; she cannot bear it. 

Groin vaults painted grey; soaring golden walls; incense and colored glass; stripes of red at the far end, over the altar. Her anxiety returns like a cloying perfume as Sansa tries to decide where to sit among the many pews. Should she sit at the front, where her family will sit—or will that make it all the more obvious that she did not arrive with them? It would draw attention to her distance from her family. But is it an insult to sit elsewhere? 

Sansa selects a pew in the middle. With her hair in a chignon and partly hidden by her hat, she is not so immediately recognizable. After all, it's a church full of red hair. Still, she finds herself self-consciously touching the base of her knot, then forcing herself, with a shiver, to fist her hands around her purse and stare ahead, at the opulent altar. She thinks of the Celtic cross she saw on that mural on her way in, of _Fáilte go mBoston dheas_ above it on the mural. 

And then it's happening. They're all filtering in, rustle of silk and wool, clouds of Chanel and Ma Griffe.

Sansa grips the pew with her black satin gloves. The organ is deafening, and against the blood pounding in her ears, it is a roar of overwhelming noise; like war, like a passing train. Her mouth fills with saliva like she might be sick. She cannot see him. She is not ready, not even after all this time. She must take care not to look at him, not even for a second.

First there's Mother and Father. Catelyn's heels clack on the marble as she strides confidently, her head bowed just enough to be appropriate. Father walks beside her with quieter strides that radiate no less power. Aunt Lysa walks with them, draped in dowdy black (Catelyn's influence can only reach so far; they used to call Lysa _whore_ and now they call her _witch_ ). Then comes Robb and his wife, Myrcella—a Lannister, the marriage done to repair relations and remind the Lannisters what they hold, should Cersei or Tywin make the mistake of stepping out of line—with the two children she's given Robb; then Arya and her husband. Then Bran and Rickon; Bran is so tall! It makes a lump form in Sansa's throat. 

But then, inevitably, her father's men follow. The Winterfell gang. Some have wives, but many do not. Many are scarred from the war, but no less willing to do what they must for the good of the family. They enter the church like a black cloud of smog, in their dark suits, with their slicky-combed hair and white collars; their immaculately-tailored black coats and their cologne. The friendlier ones—Jory Cassel and his wife, and Jory's brother—come first, nodding at the people they recognize. 

The harder ones come last, and they do not nod, and they do not bow. Theon Greyjoy slips in, and Sansa thinks of black tentacles creeping over the railing of a ship. His smile cuts like a knife—but no one dares tell Theon Greyjoy not to smile at a funeral. 

And Sansa does not have to look to know _he_ is last. __Après moi, le déluge.__ He is just as Myranda said: smoke that chokes her lungs and fills her up, but impossible to grasp. She senses his presence like she senses fire. The church seems to shrink and narrow, so she fixes her gaze on the stained-glass depiction of Jesus falling for the second time. The Roman's arm is poised to whip; Sansa's back tingles. She recites the Lord's prayer... 

...but just as he is passing her, she looks anyway—as though his fingers grip her chin and force her. 

There he is, lovely and strange. The hollows beneath his cheekbones are more pronounced, like they were during the war, but he's only lovelier for it. Dark hair, gleaming in the candlelight. Pretty lips and feral eyes. 

As he passes, he looks to her, across the shoulders of strangers, and Sansa meets his eyes through the black veil and holds her breath. His smooth lips part; his grey gaze is like a whip, leaving her stinging and weak, but Sansa is always performing, and she never lets anyone see behind the curtain. So she keeps her features frozen, and grips her purse tightly, and a flare of outrage burns when he nods subtly to her before continuing. 

She just needs to get through the mass, she tells herself. And then she will slip out the door of this church and run back to Charlestown.

Jon Snow is not the only one who can be as vaporous and uncatchable as smoke. 

She will not be pulled back into her family; she will not be pulled back into the Winterfell gang. She thinks of that serpent, coiling around her wrists, then round her neck, its forked tongue flickering against her jaw. She will not allow this serpent to bite anyone but her. 


	2. don't get any big ideas; they're not gonna happen

The pallbearers carry Jon Arryn's casket down the aisle. Winterfell lads, all in black. Dark devils taking one of their own back to the soil.

Father and Robb are at the front, Jon and Jory behind them. Her brother's eyes look red and his jaw is set, but he looks furious, not grieving. Not for the first time today, Sansa finds herself anxious to study her mother's features to see what information she might glean about Jon Arryn's death. He was an old man so it is hardly surprising that he would pass, but she can read her brother as easily as Myranda says she can read her, and Robb's anger fills the church like incense. Father is all grief, though you have to know him to see it. It settles like frost in the lines of his face, in the straight line of his mouth.

She only glimpses Jon's face as he passes, but it is as it always is: a mask, with those grey eyes taking everything in and giving back nothing. If there is something to be learned about Jon Arryn's death, she won't learn it from Jon. 

The other Winterfell lads—one of the Poole lads, and Theon—carry the casket with them, all sharp shoulders and sharply-combed hair. These men will be called lads until they're eighty, save for Robb, who will be the boss when Father dies. 

(He is a good choice; Robb is easy to follow and easy to love, and he's smart enough to know who to listen to.) 

(The word is that he mainly listens to Jon, and, sometimes, to Theon.) 

(Sooner—sooner than she is ready for—her father will pass, and these men will run Boston.)

Ah, and then comes Mother. Her blue eyes scan the church as she leads a sobbing, wrecked Lysa. Sansa thinks she can detect a hint of impatience in Catelyn's strides, as Lysa chokes out another sob that echoes in the church like a raven's caw. _Save it for the wake, you silly cow_ , she can read in her mother's clenched teeth. If there's something suspicious about Jon Arryn's death, she cannot read it in her mother's proud cheekbones or immaculate lipstick beneath her veil.

Mother spots her as they pass, and she levels a look at Sansa. _Yes, you have to_ , her looks says. She must attend the burial; she must attend the wake. Sansa nods subtly, showing her assent. It is not worth it to cross Mother, and besides, she has a sense of duty, of owing her parents at least this much. After all, they have unquestioningly allowed Sansa to pursue her own path, when no other parents—particularly ones of their status—might. 

(But she wants, more than anything, to leave, even as she also is desperate to stay, to sink back into her family's embrace. It is a battle between the serpent she holds and her brother's blue eyes, and they are almost evenly matched.) 

(But then Sansa glimpses Father Thorne again, his ringed hands and his sweeping robes, his mean little eyes and his smug brows on her like slime as he passes, and she thinks she can feel that flicker of forked tongue. She will stay as long as she has to and not a second longer.)

The day is bright and windy, the sunlight harsh and watery, as they gather round Jon Arryn's grave. Sansa spots the Lannisters: old Tywin, who is as lean as a man in his twenties, his eyes leonine and sharp as his dispassionate gaze sweeps the crowd. He is like an old, fine lion, rangy and leisurely dangerous; Cersei and Jaime will be near, then.

Just as she guessed, Sansa spots Cersei Baratheon and her husband, Robert, standing near Father. Though Cersei is at least fifty, her beauty is still a stinging slap even in this grey cemetery. Her hair gleams like spun gold; many a man's eyes stray to her, helplessly, throughout the burial. Right now she is lovely again, but she is an uneven woman whose looks correspond to her happiness: sometimes she's heavy as Lysa, waistline straining in her French dresses against all the wine she's drunk; sometimes, like now, she is slender and lithe, and her green eyes glow like emeralds. 

There are rumors about Cersei, rumors about what makes her happy, and Sansa glimpses her twin brother, Jaime Lannister, standing just behind her, looking bored. He is as remarkably beautiful as Cersei, and he knows it. He catches Sansa's eye, catches her in the act of admiring helplessly, and flashes her a dangerous grin, all fine teeth and handsome lips. Sansa looks away, her stomach turning. 

Father Thorne's latin carries across the cemetery like a paper bag carried in the wind, flashing and uneven, hard to hear. "Hic, haec, hoc," comes a smooth whisper in her ear, drowning out the blessing. Sansa stares at the grass, ignoring Theon's joke. He smells like smoke and cologne. "Found you." 

"Quiet," she breathes, as Father shovels dirt onto Jon Arryn's casket. Theon's soft laugh mists in the air. 

"Or, should I say, Snow did. Just follow his eyes; they always lead to you." 

Theon is as provocative, as prevaricating, as Myranda. "Your father picked the right man to keep watch over you—Snow always knows where you are." 

She keeps her eyes forward. Theon spent his early years in Ireland, and you can still glimpse it in his voice. The sound twists her stomach like homesickness. 

Somewhere, Mother is scowling at them for the disruption, she can feel it. "Comin' to the wake?"

"Yes," she whispers. 

"That'll make your mammy and daddy happy," he says. "And your brother, too." 

He touches the small of her back, audaciously, in acknowledgment, then sidles back again, retreating like fog. 

Sansa lifts her gaze. Across the grave she sees Jon, standing between Robb and Jory. Jon's cool gaze is on Theon weaving his way back to him, not on her, and Sansa stifles the sense of loss. What if it had been Jon who had slipped away from the grave to touch the small of her back, to whisper in her ear? 

(But of course, no cousin would do such a thing. No cousin would touch her back like Theon did. She should not wish for it. Sansa fingers her rosary and prays.)

* * *

The wake is held at the Wolfshead Pub, the crown jewel of the Winterfell gang's territory, and a place that feels like a second home to Sansa. Its windows are dark and smoky, its exterior dark green with gold lettering. The place is nearly as old as Boston itself, and it belongs, more or less, to the Starks. 

At first it's a typical wake. The pub is packed with friends and acquaintances of Jon Arryn and of her father. Photographs and possessions of Jon Arryn's are placed beneath one of the windows in the pub, and the window is cracked, letting in intermittent blasts of autumn air that ruffle the photographs. Fiddles are played and whiskey and Guinness are poured; embraces are exchanged. 

As the whiskey flows, songs are sung and speeches are made, and Sansa finds herself becoming a bit emotional.

After all, this is her family; this is where she belongs, no matter what has happened to her. 

She embraces a tearful Robb, who holds her tight and tells her in her ear that he wishes she would come back, so she pulls away lest he see the secrets and lies in her eyes, lest she taint the sweet, loving moment with that serpent. She and Arya link arms and catch up, and Sansa's heart swells with pride. Arya, always a wild little girl, is coming into her own fierce, feral beauty. Her belly is swollen with a child, and she seems happy. Arya's clever, so Sansa is careful to keep the conversation focused on Arya, on the child, on Gendry, on everything other than Sansa. 

She even sits with Father for a time, and together they watch Robb kneel down and chastise his son Brandon before his resolve breaks and he draws his son in for a reflexive, absent hug. He lets him go and straightens again, and the boy ducks over to Jon, who's sitting with Jory and Theon, talking in low voices. Robb's daughter, Joanna, crawls onto Jon's lap, and without acknowledging her, Jon lets her, adjusting her on his knee, one strong hand steadying her there so she can't topple off. Someday Joanna will be a grown woman, looking at Theon and Jon and Robb like they're old men, but Sansa cannot picture that day; she does not want to.

Father slings an arm around her shoulders and kisses the top of her head, as though he's having the same thoughts that she is. "Oh, my lovely girl," he says into her hair in a rare moment of affection. 

It's so rare to know your own luck in the moment, but as the afternoon wars with dusk, Sansa finds herself in a corner, holding a glass of whiskey and watching her family, and acknowledging that she is loved, that she is lucky; that no matter where in the world she is, she is surrounded by loving hands. 

"You look misty." Mother takes out a cigarette with seamless movements as she comes to stand beside Sansa. The two women survey the bar: the men singing, the women weeping, the children playing. 

"I was thinking," Sansa says quietly, "of how very loved I am. Of how lucky I am." 

"You are _utterly_ loved," Mother agrees matter-of-factly. Her gaze rakes up and down Sansa. "You look good. A little thin, but better that than a little soft, I always think. Jon says you seem happy." 

Is she happy? Sansa avoids her mother's eyes. The thing about happiness is that it's not just borne of security; it's borne of possibility, too. You need both. And spinsterhood is, by its very definition, the death of possibility. There can be no possibility, not with this snake coiled round her throat. Sansa looks down as Father Thorne passes them. She has half-happiness. And maybe the absence of any happiness is easier than half-happiness, she doesn't really know. She is half-happy, but that is never what a mother wants to hear. 

"Does he?" Sansa evades. Catelyn exhales a long, elegant line of smoke. 

"Only when your brother corners him into saying it. You know him; he doesn't volunteer information like that."

As if summoned, Sansa spots Jon across the pub. Like the other men, he's shed his suit jacket, and is in shirtsleeves. His hand around his whiskey glass is beautiful; she has always admired his hands. Poised around pen, knife, rifle, cigarette, whiskey glass—there is beauty in the fall from grace. If there weren't, there would be no sinners, no churches, no wakes. 

There's a shift in the air, now: the men are slowly disappearing into the back room, retreating through the haze of smoke. Her mother watches them, unsurprised. This might be a wake, but there is always, always, business to attend to. 

(Sansa knows her mother would kill to be in that room with them, to be one of the men, and she'd have more to offer than many of those men, too. But even Father is too shrewd to push the gang so far: none of them are ready to have a woman in those back rooms with them.) 

"Aunt Lysa seems..." There's no polite word for Lysa, who is in the corner sobbing, helplessly. Myrcella is awkwardly trying to manage Lysa's son, Robin, in addition to Joanna and Brandon, and Arya is looking at Lysa disgustedly. 

(For all of their purported differences, Arya is her mother's daughter far more than Sansa is.)

"Oh, she's been entirely useless," Catelyn admits in a low voice, rolling her eyes.

So her suspicions were correct, then—there is something funny about Jon Arryn's death.

Sansa meets her mother's eyes questioningly, and Mother's lips curve. She knows what Sansa's asking with her eyes. "The doctor called it a heart attack; I call it poison. But you can see the state of her. She's hardly fit to boil potatoes, let alone recall the days leading up to his death. We've had a hellish time trying to sort this out." 

Sansa watches Father Thorne take a seat beside Lysa and place a comforting hand on her soft, puffy one, and she takes a swig of whiskey in the hopes of swallowing her nausea. But then Bran is approaching them, callow and sweet in his suit (one day he will be one of the lads of the Winterfell gang, sooner than she's ready for, and it breaks her heart). He's looking at Sansa anxiously, so she tears her gaze from Father Thorne.

"Sansa, Father's asking for you," he says, nodding to that mysterious back room. Sansa glances at Mother. 

"Go on. They won't bite, for heaven's sake," she says in exasperation. Sansa feels a twinge of irritation—she wants to say she's not scared, of course. It's her father and men she's known her entire life, and as women have no place in that room, she won't be there very long. They likely just have a question or two for her, maybe about the state of Charlestown, and then she'll be dismissed. There's no real reason to be intimidated.

But the truth is, she thinks as she walks toward the back of the bar, she _is_ a little intimidated. Arya's always been the bold one, always insisting women are just as smart, just as capable, as men. And Sansa wants to think that, but in the end she always finds herself demurring, stepping aside, bowing her head, keeping quiet. These men rule Boston; Sansa barely rules her own classroom.

The back of the bar is dark. At the end of the gloomy hall there's a door, leading to a private room that is a golden haze of smoke. Sansa draws in a sharp breath before opening the door. 

There's a long table, littered with ashtrays and cigarettes, empty glasses, and an array of bottles of whiskey—some of the finer stuff, some of the coarser stuff. The air is choked with smoke and cologne, talc and sweat, whiskey and wool. Sansa scans the room. Her father and Robb sit in the middle, directly across from the door. There's Rodrik Cassel, whiskered and ruddy, who still sounds so much of Ireland that most people need to ask him to repeat what he's said. Then there's his son Jory, handsome and friendly, his brown eyes clever but sweet as he flashes a wink at Sansa. She feels better with him here. 

Then on Robb's side, there's Theon and Jon. Jon sits on the very end, smoking, not looking at her. 

Sansa's heart pounds as the men fall silent. She feels on display, on stage, and she dislikes it. She is overwhelmed by their dark glamor; after so many years of being apart from it, its effect is too strong. She cannot imagine being exposed to it for the first time, when their gazes aren't so friendly. A terrifying beauty: straight shoulders in finely-cut suits, crisp white shirting bunched around sinewed arms, shadowed eyes, sharp cheekbones, haunted mouths, scarred fingers holding cigarettes. 

"Sansa," Father says at last, his voice fond. He leans forward. "We've just been talking of the missing Sisters." 

Sansa's stomach clenches, but she sinks into her control, and keeps her face as still as a mask. 

"A tragedy," she agrees quietly. Is Jon looking at her? She senses his gaze, but every time she checks, he's looking down into his glass.

"Aye, and the latest one to go missing was in Charlestown, you know," Father agrees slowly. 

Sansa sees at once where this is leading. 

"I'm not a nun, Father," she points out calmly, "I'm in no danger—"

"—Not a nun, maybe, but you are a woman alone," Jory interrupts, leaning forward too, mirroring her father consciously or unconsciously. 

She knows what the other men think of her father's decision to let her live on her own; she suspects Jory is another one who disagrees with it, even if he loves her. "And who's to say there aren't other women being picked off by the same man? The papers're picking up on the nuns, but maybe there're more." 

Other women. Sansa thinks of the whores she glimpses from her window when she can't sleep late at night, and she cannot stop her eyes from flicking to Jon again. _Son of a whore_ , they used to whisper about him, until he grew big enough and cruel enough to make sure they never said it again. Now he's one of the most feared men in Boston, the part in his hair razor-sharp and the look in his eyes deadly, and no one calls Lyanna Stark a whore. He meets Sansa's gaze archly, like he knows what she's thinking, like he's daring her to say it.

"I'm not asking you to come home," Father reassures her now, "but we want you to be careful, Sansa. Now, Jon keeps an eye out for you, but he can't be there all the time; same with Theon." Father lights another cigarette. "No more trips alone to the cinema, to the museums. No more going off by yourself unless it's to the school. Until we know what's happening, you've got to be more careful." 

Sansa swallows. 

(She doesn't know what's happening, anymore than they do, she tells herself. This secret that she carries—well, it might have nothing to do with the missing Sisters. After all, women go missing all the time.)

(She does not have to say anything. She does not have to tell this secret. She will never be the cause of the death of anyone she loves.)

"Yes, Father," she agrees. She can tell that she's about to be dismissed, but she has one request. "Before I go—there's a girl I live with." She looks to Jon. "She's the one you delivered Mother's letter to, earlier this week." 

Jon meets her eyes over his cigarette again. 

"The silly one," he says evenly. Theon, she cannot help but notice, looks intrigued, like he senses an opportunity. 

"Yes," she concedes. "She is silly, but I love her. And she's got a new man. She said he's a bad man, but he's rich enough to buy her diamonds and furs, and take her to Paris. There are only a few men like that in Boston and I don't want her getting hurt." 

Sansa watches the men look between each other wryly, smirking. She wonders how many of them have promised their silly girls on the side similar things. Surely Theon has; she hopes none of the others have, but she also is not unaware of the ways of men, even her brother, even her father. _Women_ , their smirks seem to say. "I don't know who he is, and it might be nothing, but..." 

"We'll keep an eye," Robb promises, nodding, and she stifles a burst of adoration for him. "What's her name?"

"Myranda Royce." 

"Royce," Rodrik muses. "Sounds familiar." 

"It does," Jon agrees, nodding to Rodrik. "She looked familiar, too." 

"Even more reason for you to be careful, Sansa," Father warns her now. "If she really does have such a man's attention, the moment he finds out she lives with Sansa Stark..." 

"I'm Sansa Stone to her," Sansa says quickly, "and I never go out with her. There's no need to worry about that."

This has backfired; she can see the men looking thoughtful and unsettled, glancing between each other, wondering who Myranda's bad man might be, and whether he poses a risk to the daughter of Winterfell. "I'll be careful," she promises, and she turns to go. 

In the dark hall, once the door is shut, Sansa sags for a moment, but only that moment. She pulls herself together quickly; she is always performing, even when there is no one watching. 

(Because deep down she knows there's always someone watching.)

* * *

Hours later, when her head throbs from the whiskey and the pub reeks of smoke and stale memories, Sansa finds herself stepping out onto the sidewalk with Jon. 

("He knows the way to your house in Charlestown by heart; he could drive there with his eyes closed, I bet," Mother informed her earlier, when Sansa got up to call a cab. "And no daughter of Eddard Stark takes a cab home from a wake.")

The glossy black cars are parked along the quiet street. Sansa's heels click on the sidewalk. They are beginning to pinch. Soon she will be back in her bedroom in the boarding house, alone. _The death of possibility_ , she thinks, and she wishes, briefly, that she smoked. She follows Jon's lean form in the night to one of the cars, and he opens the door for her without meeting her eyes. She smells talc and smoke and his skin.

"Your hair's darker," he says as he slips in the driver's side and starts the car. The car is so cold that their breath clouds in the air, and Sansa pulls her black coat tighter around her. 

"I dye it darker," she admits, the back of her neck prickling, and she tries not to think of his eyes on her hair in the church, earlier. She resists the urge to touch her hair, to draw further attention to it. "So it's less distinctive." 

"Wise," Jon says around his cigarette, and he pulls away from the curb. "But a shame." 

_(no, no, no, don't say that, not like that)_

It has been years since they last were alone together. What was it—France? Of course she remembers every detail, but she wishes that she didn't. She opens her purse and fingers her rosary beads through her black satin gloves, desperately, like they are evil eye beads, but the thing is, she is the monster. Or rather, the monster lives within her, the only thing more poisonous than the serpent she holds. 

They drive through Southie, and it's late enough that the streets are empty; squares of golden light from the houses are the only signs of life. "You looked funny when your dad mentioned the Sisters, earlier," Jon says now. 

He's always been like that: a blade, cutting to the bone like Sansa's scissors through silk. Sansa stares ahead. 

"No, I didn't."

He scoffs a laugh; a noise of amusement, disdain, and disbelief. 

"Are you arguing with me?" He's got a lilt of Ireland in his words, too; it's from growing up in Rodrik's home. It wafts in and out of his voice like smoke, like perfume. "You think I'm stupid? Blind?"

"I think you see perfectly fine, but there's nothing to see. Of course the tragedy upsets me. Perhaps that's what you think you saw." 

God but she would kill for a cigarette, just for something else to do with her fingers. The rosary beads are fucking useless right now. She glimpses Jon's hands on the steering wheel and wants to break glass. Trust fucking Jon Snow to be able to see the ghost of her misery, of her guilt. 

"There's plenty to see. You're a fucking game of hide-and-seek," Jon fires back. "Always have been."

"My father wouldn't approve of that language."

"I can use whatever language I like so long as I keep you safe," Jon counters, and she knows he is right. He is quiet for a moment, but when he speaks again, he shocks her. "Saw Greyjoy touching you, earlier. At the burial." 

They pull to a stop at an intersection, and, in the dark of the car, their eyes meet at last. His eyes are dark as coal, his face in shadow. Sansa finds it hard to breathe, but she does not let her shock show on her face. She is Catelyn's daughter, after all. She's not supposed to ever be surprised by a man.

(But, of course, Jon always surprises her.)

There's a dangerous part of her that would like to play this game, but it is too dangerous, and when she blinks she sees Jon bleeding in a gutter, dying alone in a warehouse, sinking dead into murky green, eyes open and unseeing forever. She cannot let him—or anyone—get too close to her. She watches him swallow so she looks away again, stares ahead. 

"It's your turn," she breathes, nodding to the light. 

Jon's voice is soft as velvet.

"I know." 

They drive to Charlestown in silence, and at last yet too soon, they are rolling up in front of the boarding house. Sansa snaps her purse shut, relinquishing her hold on her rosary beads. She hears Jon exhale a line of smoke, and she looks down at her lap. 

"I suppose I won't see you again. Not until the next funeral or wedding." 

"No. But I'll see you." Sansa reaches to open the door, but then Jon's strong hand is on her arm, gripping her forearm almost painfully tight, and Sansa has no choice but to look at him. "You've been hiding something," he insists, "I can tell. What is it?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," Sansa says, drawing away from him, but he only tightens his grip. In the gap between her sleeve and glove, his fingertips brush against her skin. It is an accident, but nonetheless everything in her comes to life. 

His grey eyes don't miss much, and they're tracing her features now like a lover's touch. But he is her cousin, he is family, so she cannot think— "Let me go," she insists, and after a moment, working his jaw, Jon relinquishes his hold. 

He gets out of the car, quick as a flash, to help her out. On the sidewalk, his hand is on her arm again as he draws her close, so that her shoulder brushes his chest. If she looked up, she would be close enough to be kissed, so she trains her gaze on the place where his collar bends to his Adam's apple, hoping it looks like defiance and not weakness.

"You'd better be more careful than that," he says quietly, breath rushing along her ear, then he releases her. "If I can read it, someone else will, too." 

"Picking fights, like you always have," Sansa says coolly, stepping back from him and touching her hat. The memory of Jon as a boy, angry and outcast and at the mercy and charity of his dead mother's brother, hangs between them like a ghost, and now it's Jon's turn to look away. "There's nothing to read, nothing to see. Good night." 

"Good night," Jon forces out.

She can tell he wants to fight some more—he will always fight, and fight, and fight—but a light flickers on in one of the windows above them, so Sansa turns to go. She feels Jon's eyes on her like a whip on her back as she goes into the boarding house, and slams the door shut behind her. 


	3. as long as you're in my blue veins

In the days that follow the funeral, Sansa begins to lose her mind.

(Every newspaper seems to wear the faces of the missing Sisters; every conversation Sansa overhears seems to be about them. She cannot get away from them.)

She is obeying her father's orders—she is always a good girl—so she does not slip off to the Museum of Fine Arts to swoon over the ukiyo-e prints; she does not go to the cinema even though one is still playing Homecoming and she desperately wants to see it; she does not take the train to Zinman's, her favorite place to shop for fabrics, even though that, above all, is her greatest pleasure these days. 

All she does is sit in her little bedroom and try to read and pray the rosary and get bothered by Myranda; she goes to the parish school and patiently soothes crying children and breaks up fights between the rowdier boys and worries about sweet Robin's health in his grief; she eats supper with the other girls and women in her house and politely listens to their trivial concerns; she avoids reading the paper at all cost. 

(She sees their faces in the corners of her eyes.)

(She does not sleep anymore.)

And all the while, glimpses of fine black wool coats, polished black shoes, and plumes of smoke dog her every step. 

(She lies awake at night and her bedroom feels humid with her thoughts of Jon, of how it felt when he gripped her wrist, fingertips brushing the inside of her wrist.)

"No museum today, Miss Stone?" the woman who runs their house asks Sansa in passing in the hall that Saturday. Sansa smiles and shakes her head. "What a shame. Are you unwell? You look so pale, and so thin, too." 

"I'm perfectly fine," Sansa promises her, continuing down the hall, nettled that some semblance of what is happening inside of her might be visible on the outside. 

( _If I can read it, someone else will, too_ , he had breathed.)

 _You could go back_ , she thinks one night as she sits by her window and stares out at the wet street, a smear of red and white lights along mucky black. Doris Day is wailing one room over; Myranda has not heard from her bad, rich man apparently. Something about the melodrama of it grates on her nerves—Myranda's sadness is so indulgent, and so misplaced, too. 

_You might be narrowly escaping a prison of your own making, you little fool,_ she thinks furiously, and then feels bad for it. 

(And if Myranda does avoid such a man, it will be thanks to Sansa raising the alarm, though the men, she knows, will get all the credit for it, and at most perhaps she'll receive a pat on the head for being an observant little lady. The thought makes acid rise in her throat.)

(And then— _a prison of your own making_. Sansa thinks of the four walls around her, papered with the faces of the missing Sisters, and her two jailers, and the serpent twining round her throat, and her pale hands curl into fists.)

"You alright, Sansa?" Jeyne asks her one night at supper. Sansa realizes she was staring out the window into the autumn night, looking for—no, she wasn't looking for him. She wasn't; _she wasn't_. Fingers tightening round her wrist, hard chest brushing her shoulder, a growl in her ear. She wasn't looking for him. 

"Oh, yes, sorry; I was just thinking of tomorrow's lesson plan," she says, regaining mastery of herself quickly. She flashes a smile at Jeyne and leans forward. "Your hair's looking shinier than ever, Jeyne, what's your secret?"

(She is slipping; she is cracking.)

She will realize later that the idea was taking shape in her mind all along, since perhaps the graveside blessing, when Theon touched her back. Or no, perhaps later, ever since Jon growled, _saw Greyjoy touching you._

(There is something monstrous, something glittering with scales and emerald green, snarling and toxic, within her soul.)

(This secret is destroying her.)

(She is trapped in a holding pattern, where there is no beauty, there is no purpose, yet she must wait, and hold her breath, and wait and wait some more.)

The idea is birthed when she picks up an issue of Vogue. She hasn't picked up the October issue yet, and on the way home from church she buys it impulsively. They can't take magazines away from her too, can they? The cover is of an elegant woman in a red dress, with a hat and scarf that Sansa covets. Perhaps she'll make them herself, as she's got grey yarn leftover.

The magazine falls open on her bed to a French design. The dress is emerald green, taut at the hips, impossibly cinched at the waist, and draped across the hip and breast as though some precarious pin holds it all in place. It is sinuous, it is serpentine. It is, as the editorial is called, an invitation.

Its construction invites a question: how easily might it come off? 

And there it is: the plan emerges, fully-formed, like a ghost ship from mist, its darkness and angles becoming sharper, more dangerous, and more clear. 

"What is that?" Myranda asks with breathless wonder two days later, when Sansa comes home with a bundle of emerald green satin, more costly than is wise on her little schoolteacher's budget. Sansa only smiles enigmatically and retreats into her bedroom. 

(It was Theon who followed her to the shop; she saw him lingering across the street, watching her select the sensuous fabric through the window fogged with rain.)

(This is control.)

She does not think as she copies the pattern onto delicate wax paper, as she pins the curvaceous shapes to her dress form, as she stands before her mirror and measures her hips, her bust. She knows her own measurements, but she's never cut anything to be quite so tight. 

She measures at night with the light on: it is a signal, the first of many. 

At four in the morning, when her eyes burn and itch with exhaustion, and she slips the finished dress on—lights on, curtains open—over her slip, Sansa feels a pinch of misgiving as she sends the second signal.

(Who is she anymore?) 

(Has this serpent sunk its fangs into her already?)

(Do her veins already course with poison?)

The dress is too tight to be polite, and that is what she wanted. At long last she takes the dress off—the third signal—and puts it on the dress form, then gets into her nightgown and closes the curtains at last. 

In the shelter of darkness, she peeks between the curtains and sees a dark, slim figure walking up the street, away from her house, away from her window, collar turned up, ghostly smoke rising over precisely-combed dark hair. 

Her heart races and her hands tremble, and Sansa lets the curtains fall back in place and lies in her bed for a long time, in her humid, claustrophobic bedroom, wondering what a man like Jon thinks when he sees a woman slipping out of an impolite dress. 

* * *

On Friday night she sets out. She is careful to dress with the light on, making her bedroom a stage to the street. The dress is tight, and the perfume—borrowed from Myranda—is loud. She smoothes the satin over her hips. Her copper hair, dyed just a few shades darker, is brushed out and falls in soft waves around her shoulders. A glittering brooch of a dragonfly is pinned where the fabric of the dress gathers at her shoulder. 

(She is approaching the place where her plan is no longer defined; where the ghost ship becomes vaporous, unformed, mere shadow. She may be about to tumble into the sea.) 

(When she glances out the window, she sees Theon there, just as she knew he would be; she thinks of inky black tentacles twisting round her throat and wrists, pulling her downward.)

"I am absolutely sick with envy," Myranda informs Sansa from Sansa's bed, where she is paging through the October Vogue and smoking. "You have the loveliest figure. I wish I were a man for a moment, just so I could feel the lightning bolt going through me at the sight of you." 

Sansa runs the red lipstick over her lips. Her hands shake finely, just enough for her to see and feel, but not enough to muss the application of the crimson. The tuberose and musk of Fracas is giving her a dizzy, almost-headache. 

"You are far lovelier," Sansa counters, blotting her lipstick. 

(She hears war drums in her ears.)

"You still won't tell me who the lucky fella is," Myranda pouts, tossing aside the Vogue. "You smile like the goddamn Mona Lisa, you know that? But be careful," she warns. "Men like a little mystery but not a lot. It makes them angry." 

_Good,_ Sansa thinks, selecting her coat and gloves. _I hope I make him angry._

(She does not specify which _him_ she means.) 

(She does not need to. There is only one man that comes to mind when she thinks, _him_.)

"There's no mystery here," she says instead to Myranda. "Wish me luck." 

"You don't need it," Myranda says, smirking at Sansa's hips. 

* * *

Sansa leaves, and spots Theon across the street. He's smoking now. Dusk has turned to night, and the crisp air has that peculiar edge of magic that autumn carries. Even Charlestown seems to glimmer around her with promise. Her heart is racing as she hears the clack of fine dress shoes on the pavement behind her, just as she expected to. 

(She has control of this, if not of herself.) 

(She walks faster, away from those pleading faces that wink in the corners of her eyes.)

The Fishmouth Oyster Bar is just barely within walking distance of her boarding house. She has never been inside, but she knows Myranda frequently goes there on dates; she knows inside is all darkness and velvet, gleaming oak bar and glittering bottles of liquor; green glass glowing and the air thick with smoke and whiskey and perfume. It is unmistakably seductive. Her meaning cannot be misinterpreted. 

Its facade is brick with a subtle, timeless sign advertising its name. Even from here, Sansa can hear the heavy, seductive jazz. Just as she is approaching the door, those black shoes catch up to her, and there's a too-familiar hand at the small of her back, too low for its meaning to be mistaken, and Theon is opening the door for her, as though they agreed to meet here all along.

( _Saw Greyjoy touching you...)_

"Hell of a dress," he tells her as they go to the bar and he helps her out of her coat. 

"I copied it from Vogue," Sansa replies, sliding onto the barstool. "The article was called, 'An Invitation.'"

"More like a demand," Theon shoots back, shrugging out of his coat, eyes openly raking over the curve of her hip, "and one I am more than willing to obey." 

His knee brushes hers as they settle on the barstools. 

"Does your partner in crime know you're here?" Sansa asks, after their martinis have been ordered. 

Theon smirks slyly. 

"Oh, he knows." A shudder runs through her.

There is more there, and Sansa wants desperately to turn over that rock, but she only sips her martini and watches Theon, and he watches her. 

This was the end of her plan; she has run out of rope and is in free-fall now. 

( _Saw Greyjoy touching you...)_

The martinis make her dizzy. The night passes like the flashes from a camera: now Theon is putting on her coat; now he's leading her along the glittering streets; then she is sneaking him into the boarding house, though not without lingering on the front step, as though on a stage. 

And now they're in her room, and she stops him from turning out the light—there is always someone watching, and she wants her audience to see—as he reaches for her, corners her against the old wardrobe, which rattles against her weight as he backs her against it; he is breathing that her hair looks just like her brother's with the dye in it; she is looking out the window into the dark night as Theon's hands move from her waist to her ribcage, just below her breasts, thumb grazing the underside of her breast, then down to her hips; then his fingers are digging into the flesh of her hips. 

(Can he see them? Is he watching? Is this hurting him back?)

It is so different from the kiss she received in France. That was all blood rushing to her head, champagne and poetry, satin and secret gardens. But right now Sansa is uncomfortably aware of reality: the buzzing ring of silence; the too-harsh light; the wet, cloying sound of Theon kissing her neck messily. It's all too real, dirty siding and snow turned grey with smog and wrinkled clothes. 

"Wait," Sansa says, and she finds she is all control again. She pushes Theon back and he stumbles back, wiping his mouth, his eyes shrewd. 

"Daytripper," he sneers, stepping back. "Knew you'd want to leave before communion." 

His dark hair is only slightly mussed, and he combs it back into place with his fingers as they regard each other. Sansa crosses her arms. 

"Then why'd you follow me?" 

"When you want something you can't have," Theon says, "you'll take most anything else." 

There's that prevaricating grin. His dark gaze is too direct. "You know how it is." 

Her mouth goes dry. 

"I would like you to leave," she says coolly, showing none of her fury. Theon snorts and grabs his hat and coat, and before she knows it she's alone again. 

She stands before her window and she wonders if she has got what she wanted. 

She closes the curtains and turns out the light.

* * *

She sleeps until much later in the morning than she normally does, and when she wakes up at last and goes down to the kitchen, clad in a puritan grey dress with a starched collar, Jeyne and Myranda are in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading the papers. 

"There you are," Myranda purrs at Sansa's back as Sansa fetches a cup and saucer. "My Mona Lisa."

"Did you meet a fella last night?" Jeyne asks eagerly. Sansa spoons sugar into her coffee. 

"For a drink," she says lightly. "I won't be seeing him again though." 

"Because he's dead; because that green dress killed him," Myranda concludes wickedly, blowing a line of smoke into Jeyne's heart-shaped face. Sansa hears the paper crinkle beneath her fingers. "Oh, gosh, not again." 

Sansa makes the mistake of turning around at that moment, cup of coffee poised in her hand, as Myranda holds up the paper. Sansa sees the front page in a flash, the title and the photograph—

THE FOURTH SISTER TO GO MISSING 

—and the cup slips from her hand. The porcelain shatters; Jeyne shrieks; Myranda drops her cigarette. 

"What on earth—" she asks as Sansa flushes and goes to get a rag and a bin. 

"I think the cup was still wet," Sansa says as calmly as she can, kneeling on the tiled kitchen floor and wiping up the shards of porcelain. But every time she blinks, she sees the face, because she knows that face. 

"Well well well, even our Mona Lisa doesn't smile all the time," Myranda observes, but makes no move to help Sansa clean up as Jeyne uselessly hovers. "Anyway, another nun's gone missing. Sister Mary Margaery, brand new Sister. Gates of Heaven parish; you know, the one in Southie, the one with all the mobsters," she continues with wicked relish. 

Memories come back like machine-gun fire: Margaery brushing her hair before Sansa's first holy communion; Sansa, sick with jealousy and guilty for it, watching Margaery zip herself into an utterly glamorous scarlet dress. She knew Margaery, adored Margaery, looked up to Margaery. She remembers kneeling beside Margaery in church, admiring the way Margaery's lace sat so stylishly on her brunette head. 

Everyone was shocked at Margaery's choice to become a nun, as it seemed so utterly at odds with the woman she had been growing into—a woman who knew what lipstick to pick and how to order a drink when surrounded by men—but the war had changed Margaery, as it had changed all of them. 

"Mobsters," Jeyne shivers, as Sansa dumps the last of the shattered porcelain into the bin. "Can you imagine?" 

"Maybe," Myranda says coyly. Sansa swallows the bile rising in her throat. "This is the fourth nun to go missing in the last month," she continues on, skimming the article, "all from the same diocese. The Bishop is just devastated," she adds boredly. "God but he's a funny little man in that hat, isn't he?" 

"Myranda!" Jeyne says, scandalized, "you can't say that about a bishop!" 

"Then may the Lord strike me down," Myranda says boredly. "At least this nun going missing I can understand. What a beauty she was. I'd probably steal her too."

"Myranda," Jeyne reprimands quietly, "she's not just missing. She's probably—" 

Jeyne does not have to finish her sentence. Death hangs in the air of the kitchen, a smear of a specter, cloaked in smoke. 

Margaery's face is everywhere.

In the days that follow, Sansa realizes that her silly little plan with Theon was nothing, it was pointless, it was a distraction. Because the rain is here, and Margaery is missing—dead, probably, maybe, likely—and that serpent is coiling around Sansa's neck, choking her, suffocating her, silently killing her too. 

( _It's nothing_ , she tells herself.)

( _You know something,_ Margaery's face, in inky black and white, whispers back to her.) 

( _You could save us_ , another Sister whispers, the paper trodden and ripped in the street.) 

( _You are poison_ , whispers Jesus on her crucifix at night.) 

( _You are the serpent_ , whispers the emerald green dress hanging in the back of her wardrobe.) 

But she does not act until one week later. Shadows beneath her eyes, a tremor in her hands. Reality is too bright, too harsh, too hard. A priest from another Parish is visiting; Sansa glimpses Father Thorne in the hall outside of her classroom; she looks at sweet little Robin in the front row of her class, sickly and lonely and grieving and vulnerable. 

Her decision is made for her in that moment. Sansa checks the times at the cinema; _Homecoming_ is playing at six o'clock. She dresses in her plainest, most severe dress and her plainest coat. A ghost girl winks at her in the mirror in the hall as Sansa slips out of the boarding house, hands in her pockets. 

( _I look like death,_ she thinks, and then, _I am death_.)

It may be nothing; it may be everything. _Save me,_ whispers Margaery from a newsstand that Sansa passes, and she walks faster. There are no sharp clacks of fine shoes following her, but she knows he will follow her this time. 

She buys a ticket, sits in the red velvet and darkness. The theater is empty; no one cares to see _Homecoming_ anymore. She sits in the middle, in the back, just beneath the beam of silver light that paints Clark Gable across the screen. Her heart is racing, but her head is strangely clear. 

( _Save me_ , begs Lana Turner, morphing into lovely Margaery before Sansa's weary eyes.) 

(It might be nothing.) 

Just when she wonders if she has miscalculated, she hears the door to the theater swing shut. She hears the soft, slow clack of shoes down the aisle. She is hit with a burst of talc and smoke as he takes a seat directly behind her; her neck and shoulders prickle with heat like there's a fire at her back. 

"Yeah?" Jon Snow breathes behind her, as though answering a ringing phone. 


	4. she tied you to the kitchen chair

Sansa stares at the silver screen until the components of Clark Gable's face dissociate from each other and become grotesque lumps of flesh, as her blood pounds in her ears. 

She hates that he can read her so easily. She wishes she could be as opaque and mysterious as those femme fatales in the pictures but right now, dressed all in grey with her motives on her sleeve, she feels as transparent as a ghost. 

(Once upon a time, for one brief night, they had everything.)

(Now she has nothing but prim grey dresses and an empty bed and a crucifix, her lips still stinging from his rough kiss years after the fact. She has an empty bed and he has all the power. That night was all searing color and heady sparkle and beauty, and now her life is grey and his is dark and velvet. His life is all glittering lights and the strike of matches for French cigarettes; her life is the hollow turning of pages in a bible, the hiss of an iron against cotton, the clatter of dishes that need to be washed.)

(And he just says, _yeah?_ like his lips don't sting too.)

(And yet even now, after everything, she still wants to protect him. She wants to delay the moment she tells him the truth. She wants to live a little longer in this world in which they are at the pictures together, and she can breathe in his scent and remember, without fear, that one perfect night.) 

Sansa swallows. 

"Can't a girl go to the pictures on a Friday night in peace?" 

(Just one more moment. Please.)

She sits ramrod straight in the velvet seat, aware of Jon: aware of how he shifts in the seat, aware of the way he exhales as though in exasperation. 

"You brought me here to talk to me, Sansa." She can hear him lighting a cigarette. "So talk." 

Couldn't he simply shout at her for disobeying her father's orders? Then she could tearfully confess to what it is she's been carrying. It could come out inexorably, like a torrent. It could be easy, inevitable; it could require no willpower. He might let his facade drop, just for a moment, just long enough to grasp her hand in fury for her. He might be taken aback, and apologize for assuming the worst of her. And then—

But of course he sees through her at once, because he always has. There is no armor she can wear that his grey eyes will not pierce. The only choice is to strike back, one last slash as she falls. 

(She wants to protect him; she wants to strike him.) 

(Most of all she wants to hold onto him, and onto this moment, for just a little longer.)

"I saw Theon." 

(Just one more moment.)

Jon lets out a long line of smoke; hears him shift forward in his seat. She holds her breath, stares insistently at the screen. Her own seat buckles and shifts slightly as he leans a forearm against it, and she can hear his knee brushing the back of the seat, where the small of her back would be. His sleeve brushes the back of her neck, just below where her hair is pulled up and curled, and her skin prickles as something hot and heady clenches in the very pit of her belly. Smoke clouds her vision of Lana Turner. If she tilted her head back, it might brush his cheek. "For a drink," she adds in a whisper. "And then for a kiss." 

The seat creaks as Jon leans forward.

"You feel powerful now?" he breathes in her ear. "You feel like you've got the upper hand? Or do we have to play more games before you tell me what it is you wanted?" 

Sansa clenches her teeth and crosses her arms. One more question. One more moment. At least this one has the ring of legitimacy, if not the taste or the smell.

"Have you learned anything about my housemate's man?" 

"Hasn't contacted her for weeks, far as we can tell. But she was wearing a bracelet with rubies in it," Jon says. "Greyjoy thinks it's worth a lot."

"I didn't see it," Sansa says in surprise, forgetting her agony for a moment. 

"She got it this afternoon. When you were looking at cinema times," Jon explains dryly. "She came home and showed it to the other girl—Jeyne, is it?" 

"That's it." 

"You were right to be worried. If she brings him to the house, don't talk to him. Don't come out of your room. Don't let him see you." 

"He won't bother with me. They all think I'm Sansa Stone, spinster schoolteacher," Sansa counters. "There's no need to worry for me." 

"He might not know you're a Stark of Winterfell," Jon concedes, "but he's not on Myranda for her conversation. Whoever he is, he's got cash to throw around, and he likes beautiful women." 

(What can she possibly say to that?)

"I'm too old to catch his eye," she says at last when she finds her voice. Rising with the cigarette smoke is the memory of that night in France, of all that led up to it, and all that crashed down around them afterward. The last time her beauty mattered to her at all.

She suddenly feels as old as she says she is, and she is tired of all of this—the secrets, the sacrifices, the shame. The Sansa who lived that night in France was another girl, a younger girl, a sillier girl, a girl she can never reclaim. She has put this moment off long enough. "Jon, I think I know something about those missing Sisters," she says abruptly.

 _"When women talk world politics, it makes me laugh,"_ Clark Gable says on screen, in the silence that baits his reply. 

"So go to the police," Jon suggests, and she knows him well enough to know this technique. You have to fight through so many walls of thorny briar to get to Jon. 

"You're the only one I can tell. It might be nothing. But if it's... if it's real, if it's true..." 

The power and the horror of this secret come rushing to her abruptly. Their moments of posturing seem so silly now; she feels like such a fool for the way she posed before her window, in that ridiculous dress. What did it get her, in the end? She sets her arms on the armrests and grips them until her slender knuckles turn white. "I've never told because I am afraid. For you. For my father. My brother. For everyone I know and love." 

Jon says nothing, just waiting. 

(She remembers that summer day, she remembers the dress she wore, sun in her hair and on her shoulders.)

(She will never be that young or that lovely again.) 

But none of those details matter, because this is not her story. "It was at the picnic after VE day," she begins carefully. "At Gates of Heaven. I'd gone inside to fetch more plates from the rectory, and I heard an argument behind closed doors. A woman's voice, and Father Thorne's. I meant to walk past quickly, so as not to intrude—"

—For some reason, Jon lets out a soft scoff—

"—but I saw Tywin Lannister waiting outside, and I wanted to avoid him, so I had no choice but to linger." 

"That was the day Robb asked Myrcella to marry him," Jon recalls dryly. They had been married a month later, in a rush, and soon after that—too soon to be proper—Myrcella announced she was pregnant, raising more than a few brows. Of course, Sansa knew the decision had been made in a smoke-filled room a month earlier, made by her father and Rodrik and Jory and Jon and so many other men, for reasons she had not been privy to at the time. It only helped that Robb had apparently been entangled with Myrcella on the side. 

"That day, yes. So I lingered, trying not to listen, but I heard the nun arguing. _'What you've done is evil—_ ' she started, _'and you won't silence me. None of you will.'_ " 

She pauses. She remembers the smell of grass and linoleum, the stark cheapness of the rectory halls compared to the finery of the church. She is there again, the claustrophobic smell of old paint bubbling in the heat and the shouts of delight from outdoors; she remembers how suddenly they felt distant, how she felt a lump in her throat and knew if she tried to leave they would hear the door swinging, but how if she listened in any further... "She was an elderly nun," Sansa continues now, "and I remember how sweet she was, and he—he slapped her. No, he _hit_ her. It wasn't a slap, it was a punch. A hit. Hard enough that she dropped to the floor and something shattered, I don't know what. And he told her, 'if you dare breathe a word of your lies, I will take everything from you.'" 

"Did he find out you were there?" 

"Yes." Sansa looks down at her lap. "I thought I'd use the commotion to leave—to go get help, get Father, or you; I honestly don't know what I planned—but Father Thorne came out just as I tried to leave." 

"So you were trapped between Thorne and Lannister," Jon concludes quietly. 

"Tywin had gone. It was his son, Jaime," Sansa explains. 

She cannot communicate the fear she felt that day, trapped between those two men. She has always found Jaime Lannister to be uncommonly beautiful, a creature of art and terror, deadly as the panthers drawn in the encyclopediae they keep at the school. But that day she saw his bladed edges, not his beauty, as he held the door she'd tried to open, a terrible smirk curving his lovely mouth. She had gasped, looked back at Father Thorne, who had stood, unsmiling, a few arms' lengths behind her.

(She knows bad men well. They do not make you giggle and blush.) 

(She remembers the sweat trickling down the small of her back, dampening the lawn cotton of her dress at the small of her back; she remembers the trickle of sweat running down between her breasts and remembers Jaime Lannister's emerald eyes flicking to her breasts almost boredly, like he could see and smell and taste her fear and found it too pitiful to even be amused by it.)

(She remembers looking back at Father Thorne, a man she had never liked but had always respected; the man who had christened her and her brothers and sister, the man who would later wed Myrcella and Robb. She remembers, as though in a dream, hoping some other man—the true villain—might come out of that horrible room, proving Father Thorne's innocence. She remembers him merely nodding at Jaime Lannister before turning back and retreating into the cool depths of the rectory.) 

"What did Lannister do?" Jon's voice is low. 

"He waited until Father Thorne had gone back to the church, then he grabbed me by the hair—" 

(She hears Jon draw in a sharp breath; or is it her imagination?)

"—and told me that if I ever told any unsightly stories about Father Thorne or his family, he would—" 

She does not finish. She closes her eyes and bites her lip. She sees Arya found on her kitchen floor, eyes open and unseeing, blood smeared on the tile beneath her; she sees Rickon's body being hauled from the Charles, waterlogged and bloated; she sees—

"Sansa," Jon whispers, drawing her back to the present. He must have sensed she had gone somewhere dark, for he does not say anything else. 

For a long time, they do not speak. She remembers seeing Jaime Lannister across Jon Arryn's grave and admiring him even in that moment, like noticing a predator's beauty just as their beastly teeth graze your throat. 

_"Snapshot, I'm going to be lost without you,"_ says Clark Gable on the screen. 

"Well. There it is," she says at last, when she has regained mastery. She hears Jon light another cigarette. "Maybe it's nothing. Maybe it was just—"

She waits until the urge to cry passes again, like a passing train. "The thing is, that Sister passed away, not a month later. And now... they're all from the same diocese. Our diocese. And Margaery..."

"It might be nothing," Jon agrees, speaking around his cigarette. "Might be something." 

"So you'll look into it?" 

"I'll ask around," Jon hedges. She can hear him starting to rise. He leans forward, pushing her seat forward. She holds her breath, so that he does not get the satisfaction of seeing what this nearness does to her. She holds her chin high. "If I catch you looking into this yourself," he begins quietly, voice in her ear, "it's back to your father's." 

He is so near that when she tilts her head, so slightly, her cheek brushes his clean-shaven jaw. She is afraid to breathe. 

"It was my secret," she points out as evenly as she can. 

"You think Jaime Lannister will hesitate to slit your throat?" he parries, just as evenly, breath ghosting along her cheek. "He's not as stupid or easily manipulated as Greyjoy, Sansa. You won't bend him to your will with a tight dress and red lips. And if he feels like he's been played, he won't leave nicely when you ask." 

_What about with you?_ she wants to ask. _What would bend_ you _to my will?_ The question hangs in the air, and she considers asking it, but Jon rises now, and her seat shifts as the weight of his arms pulls away. "Stay out of it." 

He leaves her there, alone in the cinema with Clark Gable and Lana Turner, her cheek still tingling where it brushed his skin, rage in her throat and longing coiled tight within her, glittering and monstrous and angry. 

* * *

"There you are. Not like you to be late, Snow." 

Robb and Greyjoy are there already at a table in the very back of the club, looking down over the audience and stage. Robb's face is flushed with whiskey and goodwill—he loves a Friday—and his arm is slung playfully around Greyjoy's slim shoulders. There are girls—there are always girls, where there's Robb—and they giggle and bat their lashes at Jon, but he cannot bring himself to care.

He feels dizzy and sick with anger; he is ill with poison; he is more angry than he has been in a very, very long time. It is a good thing that this club, Lucky Strike, is so dark and loud. He could not bear silence right now.

(He keeps picturing it, like picking at his knuckles as they scab over.) 

(What did her eyes look like, as Lannister grabbed her hair?)

(And what will Lannister's eyes look like, Jon thinks savagely, when he is done with him?)

"I had another appointment," Jon says simply, doffing his hat and coat. Robb laughs as one of the girls snatches Jon's hat and sets it on her stiffly-curled head coyly. 

"You didn't tell us you knew the most beautiful fella alive, Robb," another girl pouts. Robb lets out another laugh and drops his arm from Theon's shoulders, so he can light the girl's cigarette. 

"Aw, come on, you said Greyjoy was, just five minutes ago," he teases, elbowing the girl. "What about me?"

(Robb's hands never wander but he likes a flirtation as much as he likes a Friday.) 

(He will leave three very disappointed girls to go home on their own tonight.)

Across the pristine white tablecloth, Jon meets Greyjoy's smiling eyes. He does not smile back. 

Robb seems to sense something, because when the music starts again, and the siren on the stage starts belting out her song, he glances between Jon and Theon with a question in his blue eyes. Robb's naivete is always bluff; he is wise to play it up. 

"Do I need to step in here?" he asks, barely audible over the music, looking between them. Jon stares at Theon; Theon stares, unflinchingly, back. 

(He knows this moment has been coming.)

"No."

"No." 

The night passes. Theon's jokes become increasingly oblique and increasingly cruel, until all three girls look tearful but confused, sensing it is at their expense but unable to quite parse the quips in Latin and French, and Robb looks increasingly irritable and impatient. 

"I'm going to get them a cab," he says shortly, around four in the morning, as he lights a cigarette. "And when I come back, you'll've sorted this bullshit out." 

Neither man speaks. Jon has been waiting for this night; he has only spoken to Greyjoy in passing, when their shifts in Charlestown overlap, so he has not been able to sort out his business with Greyjoy. Now he is glad that he did not have a chance to sort it yet.

All three get to their feet along with the girls. As Robb passes, he takes Jon by the arm. Robb faces the door; Jon faces the table, and Robb leans into him as though to whisper in his ear. Theon looks up at him, smoking and omniscient. Robb does not need to say anything—Jon knows this is a warning. After a moment, Robb lets go of his arm, slaps him on the shoulder, and calls something to the three girls. 

There is no need for any prelude. Theon knows what's been coming to him from the moment he followed Sansa in that damned dress. 

Wordlessly, Jon and Theon shrug out of their jackets. Theon's never a coward when Robb's around; he won't try to weasel out of this now—especially not knowing what Robb would do if he found out Theon laid so much as a hand on Sansa.

Theon follows Jon down the cramped back stairs, into the alley—the manager of Lucky Strike goes to yell at them that they can't, that he won't have any of this nonsense at his establishment, then realizes they're Winterfell lads and retreats—and then they're in the smudged, inky alley, breaths misting and rising in the air, shirts blinding white.

Jon watches Theon unbutton his cuffs as he does the same; he feels drunk with rage, breathless with fury; they push their sleeves up; and then Greyjoy is rounding on him. 

It takes all of a few minutes: the shriek of fine shoes against wet pavement, the grunts of pain; a low, callous laugh from Theon at one point as Jon watches him reel with pain, bent over; the _thwump_ as Jon pins him to the brick wall. 

A trickle of blood drips down Theon's chin and blossoms like ink on his shirt. He grins, slowly. 

"You see her hips in that dress?" 

"You touch her again and you're dead," Jon says simply. His vision is electric; he sees everything, down to Theon's short dark lashes, in perfect clarity. 

"You've been thinking of this all week," Theon muses, his voice raw. "Know what I've been thinking about all week?" 

Jon hits him again in the stomach and steps back as Theon drops to the pavement, bent over. 

"That's Robb's sister."

At this, Theon looks up. His hair is coming out of its pomade, and a limp hank of dark hair falls across his forehead. 

"Yeah, Snow," he says slyly, "she is. Isn't she?" 

Robb opens the door to the alley then, his fine wool coat over his jacket. His blue eyes are cool as he takes in their fight, the two men breathless, bloody, damp in the mist. 

"Done?" he asks, taking a long drag on his cigarette. 

"Yeah." Jon glances at Greyjoy, still on his knees. He swallows a mouthful of blood and wipes his mouth. "Yeah, we're done." 


	5. a very strange enchanted boy

When Sansa returns to the boarding house, supper is over and Jeyne and Myranda are in Myranda's room. As Sansa climbs the narrow dark stairs, she can hear the quavering strings and the velvet of Perry Como; Jeyne's nervous breathy laugh followed by Myranda's low, seductive chuckle. _Please let them not hear me,_ she prays, walking gingerly past the door. She just wants to be alone, to contemplate how somehow now her life is even emptier, now that she has let go of her secret.

(Where is the relief? She only feels hollow.)

"Well. This is quite the about-face from that dress." Myranda's voice stops her. _Caught._ She pokes her head into the hall to study Sansa in her grey dress and grey coat, and Sansa has no choice but to turn around and force a pleasant, benign smile. Myranda is wearing too much perfume again, and too much blush. In the low lamplight, a ruby bracelet glitters at her wrist, just like Jon said. A bracelet like that doesn't come for free, but Myranda is too naïve to know the cost. "Why, you look like a ghost!"

The rubies glint in the golden light as Myranda signals for Sansa to join them. "Come on, we'll cheer you up and get some color back in those cheeks again."

"Myranda's seeing her man again tonight," Jeyne explains as Sansa follows Myranda into her bedroom.

It is identical to Sansa's in layout, but where Sansa's is compulsively tidy and spare—no personal touches save for her sewing machine, the crucifix, a vase from Paris of particular meaning to her, and a program from a Ballet Russes performance in New York City—Myranda's is a mess. The walls are already tinged and darkened with cigarette smoke; clothes spill out of the wardrobe and across the bed in a riot of cheap, bright fabric; a pretty silk scarf, red, is draped over the lamp beside the bed, and it gives the room a lurid, vulgar glow. Myranda sways to Perry Como's coo as she studies her hair.

_Because you come to me,_   
_With naught save love..._

"Miss Stone doesn't approve of my man," Myranda observes. She picks up her glass of whiskey from the windowsill and sips it, batting her lashes at Sansa. There is something sharp and crackling about Myranda tonight, and Sansa realizes she is nervous. Her dress is too tight, cutting into her waist, and Sansa glimpses Jeyne eying the way the fabric strains there. Not out of spite or disdain, but out of concern—perhaps the same concern that Sansa has. Myranda has been drinking more, eating more, smoking more, and buying more lately, like a train building up far too much vicious, churning momentum. 

(Sansa cannot help but think of Cersei.)

"It's not that," Sansa reassures her, slipping out of her coat. "He broke your heart, Myranda. Any friend would be cautious about welcoming him back."

"You haven't even met him," Myranda snaps suddenly, and she sprays on more perfume. Sansa and Jeyne glance at each other as Myranda fusses with her thick dark hair in the mirror that hangs on the wardrobe door. "If you met him, you'd understand. There's no man like him."

She looks back at Sansa then. "But like hell I'm letting him see _you_. Then again, if you wear drab dresses like that more often, maybe you're no competition at all."

"That's really mean, Myranda," Jeyne says quietly, but Sansa is not remotely wounded by the comment. She watches Myranda getting ready, anxiously flitting between adding more of this or that, the ruby bracelet glinting like large drops of blood at her wrist. She looks like a stunned animal at a forgotten picnic: panicked and frantic over which part of the feast to start on first. Starving but so overwhelmed that she cannot even begin to sate her hunger.

"I thought the point of being in love was to be happy," Sansa says at last, as Myranda tugs on the too-tight dress. "You seem unhappy."

Myranda lights a cigarette and tosses a look back at Sansa.

"The point," she says slowly, "is to be the master of my own life. To not be at the mercy of the world's whims. You're always at someone's mercy if you're poor."

She lets out a laugh. "What does happiness even mean, anyway? It's like the weather. It comes and goes as it pleases. What control could I possibly have over my own happiness? What control do you have over it? You act like you're in on some secret and I'm not—but I've never once gotten a real smile out of you. When was the last time you smiled like a girl and not like a Mona Lisa?"

She finishes off the glass of whiskey just as the woman who owns the house, Mrs. Whent, stalks past. Mrs. Whent looks into the room, wrinkling her nose at the overwhelming fug of Fracas and cigarette smoke. Sansa is grateful for the diversion because she feels sick.

(She knows the last time she smiled like a girl.)

(She can pinpoint the exact second.)

"I see you're wearing your intentions tonight," she says tartly, and Myranda tosses her hair as Mrs. Whent's gaze drops to the way Myranda's red dress twists and writhes around what Myranda calls her 'assets.' "Be careful that you lure the right type of creature with that bait," she adds, nodding to the dress. Myranda blows smoke in Mrs. Whent's direction, but they're too far apart for it to be as insulting as Myranda would like. Sansa has never seen Myranda so caustic. Even if Myranda is prickly, she is usually warm.

"Did you have anything else to say? Any other great wisdom to impart?" she asks in a low, scathing voice. Mrs. Whent sends a beseeching look to Sansa, ever the responsible presence next to Myranda's florid tempests and Jeyne's mincing girlishness.

"Turn this racket down," she says at last. "You know I hate music this late. It's vulgar."

Myranda sulks but she stops Perry Como's croon all the same. 

(And isn't that the crux of it all? She's just like Sansa. For all her rage and hunger and spite, she still does as she's told, too.)

(Maybe, in a way, all women are poor. We are always at someone's mercy.)

Later, Sansa watches Myranda step out the front door from her bedroom window. It is now too late to really be appropriate for Myranda to be leaving. Sansa looks for this mystery man, but Myranda meets no man on the street. She starts walking, her posture tight and her steps swift, and disappears round the corner.

Sansa drops back onto her twin bed and lays there in her dark room, fully dressed, knowing she'll muss her dress and hair. For once she doesn't care.

The vase is on her scroll top desk, a tiny treasure of cranberry glass, and in the darkness it subtly glints like ruby. It has been carried from Paris, the last vestige of her last real smile, the last vestige of a time when she and Jon were not the people they are today: her a silent sister dressed all in grey, him a ghostly, stalking predator in the trees. Once upon a time she was a blushing girl who would smile for anything; once upon a time he was a hero in uniform, exactly who he had always wanted to be. 

The war had changed all of them, but it wasn't the battles or the death that had changed Jon, and it wasn't the hospitals that changed Sansa. The turning point had been the day she had bought the vase—the singular moment where they had each realized that the war had crystallized who they both could have been, in another life, and now that time—of being themselves exactly as they were—had to end. 

But she had not always known that Jon had been more than just a lad of Winterfell. 

Sansa sits up and goes to the desk. The program from the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo's performance of _Giselle_ , at the Metropolitan Opera House, is tacked to the wall, and she takes it down to study it. The ink is so faded, and the room is so dark, but she does not need to read it. 

(She smiled that day, too.)

Jon had been forced to accompany her to Manhattan, after she had begged her father, for months, to be allowed to see the ballet. She has always loved _Giselle_ ; the beauty of it, the tragedy, the folly and the depth of love on display. The Queen of the Wilis' spite, and Giselle's final generosity. True love.

(She had been furious that she would see it with Jon—sulky, sneering, quietly cruel Jon. Beautiful Jon. Her cousin Jon.) 

("It's not fair!" she had finally confessed to her mother, thinking she would find an ally in her mother, who has always disliked Jon. Catelyn had only rolled her eyes, lit a cigarette, and reminded Sansa of the profound suffering the rest of the country was in. 

"And besides," she had continued coolly, "he might as well make himself useful for _something_.") 

They had taken the train down to Manhattan together in blistering silence, him elegant and hateful in his crisp suit, her petulant and delicate in her dress which she'd sewn herself. New York City is enchanting around Christmastime, and in November that year, even amid the Great Depression, it had still glittered and writhed with promise, setting her imagination aglow. 

(In spite of hating Jon and resenting his presence, a tiny part of her had delighted in the glamor of walking toward the Metropolitan Opera House with a boy who looked the way boys should, in her opinion, look. _He might as well make himself useful for something,_ Sansa had told herself, telling herself not to feel badly for finding her cousin so handsome. It was merely an observation, after all. She had observed that Robb and Father were handsome too. It was no different.) 

But when they had taken their seats and the curtains had parted, a curious melancholy, gnawing like hunger, had consumed Sansa. Watching Mia Slavenska, her lithe arms and the tulle swishing around her lean legs, Sansa had felt sick like she had eaten too much rich food.

She had just had her birthday, and suddenly the marking of time had hit her: she would never be a ballerina. It wasn't like she had wanted to, per se, and it wasn't like the realization was truly a shocking one. Of course she would never be a ballerina. She had never actually wanted to be one, or tried to be one. The very idea was absurd. But, watching all of this profound talent, she had gripped the arms of her seat and realized there was an ever-growing list of things that would never happen, and with every year it would only grow longer. Possibilities narrowing, endlessly, until there was only one track left, inexorably toward death.

(Did everyone feel this way?)

(If so, how were they meant to carry on, in the face of such a thought?)

She had felt Jon staring at her, and she had realized her eyes were glassy with tears. She'd glanced at him, holding her breath, and their eyes had met in one striking moment of honesty. 

"You alright?" he'd whispered in a low voice. She had nodded. 

There was no way to sum up her epiphany without sounding like a fool, but then, she got the feeling Jon would find her a little fool no matter what. He might as well make himself useful and listen to her. A sin-eater, consuming her darkest, most hopeless thought. Maybe if she passed it onto him, its grim sadness would leave her alone.

"Do you ever think about all the things you'll never be, and feel sorry about it?" she had asked, meeting Jon's dark eyes directly. 

He had looked away. She had seen him swallow as his grey eyes settled, unseeing, on Alexandra Danilova. She had thought his cheek, freshly shaven, had looked quite smooth in the low light. She had had the ridiculous, mindless urge to run her lips along it in the ghost of a kiss.

"All the time," he had admitted quietly. 

And everything had changed after that. 

(She had barely taken in the rest of Giselle; yet it was her favorite performance to date.)

(She had sat there beside Jon, suddenly, overwhelmingly aware that this cruel, sour-tempered, lovely boy contained so much more than she had ever realized.)

(What did he dream about? What did he think about in the small hours between sleep and waking? What did he fantasize about, to comfort himself?) 

After the performance had ended, they had walked back out onto the Manhattan street in a daze, arms brushing, glances grazing. As they had walked back toward Penn Station, Sansa had wondered, dreamily, if they looked like two young people drunk on the heady epiphany of new love. 

(Of course, it wasn't like that. She just liked to think about love, about being in love, about possibility, about romance. She and Jon could never be in love.) 

(It just seemed like an explosive antidote to that darkness which had almost swallowed her whole.)

On the train ride back, they had sat side by side. Jon had allowed her the window seat, even though it was too dark to see outside. Halfway back to Boston, he had finally spoken. 

"What was the story?" 

"The story?" Sansa had been lost somewhere in her mind and had looked back to him in surprise. His grey eyes had been avoidant, covert. Shy. 

"The ballet," he'd explained, looking down at the program still clutched in her gloved hand. "Giselle. What's the story of it?" 

It had been an olive branch; a mark of generosity. He had been being kind. He had known she would want to tell him the story, she knew it as well as she knew anything else, and he had been offering her something she would want. Something that would matter, uniquely, to her. 

Now Sansa presses the program to her breastbone and, in the dark, lets herself smile, just the way she did then. For a moment she hears the lilting strings of Giselle; she sees the smoothness of Jon's jaw; she feels the velvet of the seats beneath her fingertips and the crinkle of her new dress at her neck.

But then a car on the street lets out a honk, and someone shouts, and the moment is ruined. She drops the program onto the desk and, after a moment of panic, shoves it in one of the drawers. 

( _The death of possibility_ , she finds herself thinking again.) 

Now that she has handed off her secret to Jon, she realizes, there is nothing left in her life—good or bad, beautiful or ugly. She has nothing but some old paper and a bit of colored glass to remind her of what life really felt like. She has nothing but ghosts. 

Sansa readies herself for bed. She kneels on her floor and prays. She acts, in every way, like there is nothing unusual about her or her life. 

(But she knows what she will do.)

(Because she is as hungry as Myranda and Cersei, and if she cannot have happiness, she will at least have mastery.) 

(She refuses, utterly, to rush along on a single inexorable track.)

(She will carve her own path. She will be at no one's mercy—not her father's, not Jon's, not even Jaime Lannister's.

* * *

The next day she finds Theon all too easily. She has left her hair down and soft, letting it catch the daylight just like Robb's does, and she's worn a cornflower blue dress that makes her eyes brighter. 

He looks terrible. His left eye is bruised and purple; his lip is split. But he's smiling like he always does as she approaches, dark eyes taking in the copper in her hair and the cornflower blue in her eyes hungrily. He's haunting an alleyway nearby, smoking, and he raises his brows as she approaches. 

"What happened to your face?" she asks. Theon scoffs and shakes his head, pushing back from the wall. 

"A few mistakes, a few secrets," he says carelessly. "It'll happen again, I think. One way or another." 

Cryptic and smirking as ever. Sansa shivers impatiently in the wet wind and hugs her coat tighter around her, now that Theon's seen it. "You want something," he observes, eyes lingering on the collar of her dress, still visible.

"I want to know where Loras Tyrell can be found on a Saturday night." 

Theon takes this in, takes a long drag on his cigarette. 

"I don't do anything for free," he says, studying her hair. 

"Then what do you want for it?" 

He contemplates this, makes a show of thinking on it. 

(If he says he wants _her,_ she does not know what she will say.) 

"I'll think of something. You can pay me later," he drawls, and she almost sinks with relief, but of course, she does not let it show on her face. "Tyrell goes to the Redwyne Rooms on Saturdays." 

"You sound certain." 

Theon looks amused, and avoids her eyes. 

"That's 'cause I am," he says. "He goes late, when all the trouble starts. I'd offer to take you tonight, but I've got something on." 

"I'm not going tonight," she lies smoothly. "Maybe next week." 

"It's a date," Theon says slyly. 

* * *

That night, Sansa slips into the green dress again. The Redwyne Rooms are elegant, sophisticated; in spite of everything she feels a ripple of anxiety that she shoves down. She looks out her window for some sign of Jon—she knows Theon will not be there—but she cannot find any hint of him. Perhaps he is busy with whatever Theon's 'got on.' 

(Maybe it's a party. Maybe it's something grim and violent; hats pulled down low and collars turned up as they follow a ghostly enemy and chase him to his death. Maybe it's something loud and whiskey-flavored. Maybe it's a night on the town, with golden-haired girls whispering things in Jon's ear.) 

(She puts on her lipstick and perfume, and refuses to think of it.) 

She leaves early, so as not to attract attention. The Redwyne Rooms are in downtown Boston, and it's a long journey for her. She takes a cab, though it is costly, and grips her clutch in her gloved hands as she wonders what her plan is. She hopes to speak with Loras in private, she hopes to hear more about why his sister became a nun and how she had seemed leading up to her disappearance. But there's no guarantee that he'll speak with her; there's no guarantee she'll even be allowed into the Redwyne Rooms, especially alone. 

(Who is she anymore?)

The cab rolls to a stop in front of a stately brownstone building, with velvet ropes and a line of immaculately-dressed patrons. Sansa pays the fare and gets out, and gets in line. She knows that her discomfort is not visible, but she feels as though she has walked directly into the line of danger, between two warring trenches, even though she is surrounded by wealthy couples, by light and twinkle and warmth. 

She is just reaching the doorman when she hears the rapid clack of a man's sure strides on the sidewalk; a strong hand is at the small of her back just as the doorman smiles at her, appreciating the slim view of her green dress. 

"Like hell you're going in there," Jon says in her ear, about to steer her away, and her skin prickles when his lips graze her ear as she turns her head; but the doorman is smiling at them, pulling open the door and letting out a blast of jazz and the golden scent of liquor. 

"Thank you," Sansa says smoothly to the doorman and walks in, and, surrounded by people who will talk, who likely know that Jon is a Winterfell lad, who fear the Winterfell gang and who know people like the Lannisters, Jon has no choice but to furiously follow her inside. 


	6. turn the cheek until the fire dies

The doorman directs them past a line of enormous ferns that tickle their cheeks, to a golden-grated elevator that has room only for the two of them. Jon still has no choice but to follow her in, hand firm on her back as though he is guiding her. The door clangs shut after they step inside, the muffled volume of the jazz becoming oppressive as they ascend. 

For a moment they are alone in this world of shadow and darkly-gleaming brass, and when she glances to Jon at her side and registers that they are alone again, all of the things that have ripped them apart seem very far away. This is Jon's power; this isn't in the bible or the masses but in the old folk tales that could only have come from the mist and moss of Ireland. Every time they are alone, as it ever was, she feels she has wandered to some distant land ruled by him alone. He could make her forget her name, her family, her job, with a mere look. It is never safe to meet his eyes; she cannot know what he will make her do. 

(Why did they ever part? What was the reason? For a moment she cannot recall.) 

Jon's hand is still at her back, a gesture both possessive and familiar with its ease, like her body belongs only to him and they both know it; like he wants her to remember that here, now, he holds the power. 

(Because in some ways she's an untouchable princess and he is a faceless mercenary, and in other ways he's a terrible god and she is nothing but a useless, fallible mortal, who bends to his will and goes where he points and dances until death for him. And this power between them is fluid, a droplet of water forever rolling back and forth between them, slipping through their fingers whenever one of them tries to master it.)

"I thought I made myself clear," he says, voice gravelly with anger, when the lift clangs to a halt. They have come to a floor with plum silk-covered walls and a plush, dark viridian carpet. Dionysus' lair; Herod's halls; the hall of the king of the Folk. "That if I caught you investigating this—"

"—Investigating? What investigation? You caught me going to a very posh club on an evening. How scandalous." 

She stares ahead as she lets her words drop between them like icicles, all too aware of the fingertips at the small of her back.

"Your father told you not to."

He is plainly furious with her; he is no longer playing one of his games. His fury is satisfying, even if it makes a lump form in her throat. She remembers what he once promised her on a balmy night in Paris when they were both drunk on champagne; when he sounds so angry, so passionate, it almost sounds like he's kept that promise, like he's still that young man who thinks he can take on the world and win.

(What has life done to them? What have they done to each other?)

There is no one to attack but him, and herself. So she attacks them both. 

"I only wanted to go dancing. You know I love to dance," she says coolly. He is touching her, but there can never be more than this, and to think that this—and only this—is what all of the lovely, glittering pieces of her life has added up to—it's unthinkable. "Maybe a handsome stranger will ask me to dance." 

Jon draws in a sharp breath; _good_ , she thinks, as the pressure at the small of her back increases slightly. "Perhaps I'll meet the man of my dreams tonight, and finally get married like my father wants me to." 

She hears him swallow. 

"Perhaps you will," he says roughly, in just the same raw voice that he once made _that_ promise to her. She knows it's folly to try and master her brief power over him, but she is a fool, always a fool, and she tries anyway. She likes control, after all, and she wants him to know it.

So she says the fool thing.

"Will you watch me dance with him? Like my father told you to? Like you watched Theon kiss me?" 

"If you want me to." His voice is a quick dark blade in the night, and his hand fists in the fabric at the small of her back. "Look me in the eye and tell me that's what you want." 

"I don't care what you do."

She stares ahead, aware of how the silk is pulled taut across her hips, of how she can smell the talc and the scent of his skin. She is aware of every breath she draws, of how ragged it sounds in the quiet, of how it makes her chest rise and fall, of how obvious it must be to Jon. 

"Look at me," he commands under his breath, and she tilts her face away, pretending to be aloof, but really aware of how her power is slipping through her fingers; she is about to watch it slip back to Jon, and then she'll really be in danger. "You can't," he observes callously. "You can't even look at me when you say it. You want me on a leash, always nearby yet at an arm's length from you." 

"Is it so wrong for a woman to want control?" 

"You want control of me?" 

She looks at him then, a reflex that is too quick to tamp. He's so close that his chin brushes her forehead as she turns, and when she moves to step back, she realizes she cannot; his hand is still fisted in the wool of her coat at the small of her back, twisting her dress. She stares at his collar, then at his jaw, never meeting his eyes, like he is some mythical creature whose gaze can scorch her. 

"I want control of my life. I'm tired of being batted about between the men in my life." 

"You think anyone has control of their life?" Jon counters, breath rushing along her skin. "You think I've got any more control over my life than you do?" 

Oh but his fury is so deeply satisfying. 

"I live in a tiny grey room and wear grey dresses and teach at a grey school. You do what you like, you go where you like and fight who you like, you kiss who you like—" 

"—Bullshit. You have more freedom than I do." He's so angry that she cannot help but look up at him, holding her breath, studying the grey eyes that look black in the darkness, fringed by the lashes she has always loved. Even in the darkness she can see the faintest hint of a flush of fury across his cheeks. "You do whatever you want, and I pay the price. You kiss who you like," he adds. 

And this was why she so feared meeting his eyes, because her knees are weak and he draws the truth from her as effortlessly as if she were the one leashed. 

"No, I don't," she confesses, and he lets out a shaking breath and in the darkness inclines his head. She closes her eyes as his forehead brushes hers, then his nose, and his free hand is on her jaw, thumb moving along her lower lip, and he's breathing her name, and then—

—The door at the end of the hall swings open and they jerk apart just as Sansa meets the grey-green, feline eyes of a man she does not know, as he pushes open the door wider. Through the bars of the lift's door, she watches a much shorter man emerge from the club as well, and meets his mismatched gaze. Tyrion Lannister. 

"Why, I know that hair," the unfamiliar man observes, glittering gaze roving over her like a caress. 

He is handsome but slight, beautifully-dressed and cruel, with a pointed beard and those remarkable green eyes—green eyes which drag themselves from Jon's hands, as though he can sense that they were fisted in Sansa's coat and grazing her lips only seconds ago, and back to their faces. "And those eyes," he adds quietly. "I know those eyes. Tully hair, Tully eyes. You must be Catelyn's daughter." 

Before Sansa can protest, the man offers a Puck-like grin as he looks to Jon. "And you're Lyanna Stark blood if I ever saw it. Jon Snow, Winterfell's Bastard." 

Jon looks predatory as he slides open the lift-door. 

"Baelish," he says coolly, nodding to him. "Lannister." 

"Stone and Snow," Tyrion muses, stepping out from behind Baelish. So he knows about her false life, too. "My brother tells me he saw you at Jon Arryn's funeral," he continues, looking at Sansa. "He told me you'd grown even more beautiful, but I didn't believe you could get any lovelier. I see now I've been proven wrong." 

Sansa pretends to be flustered at the compliment, but there's an oil-slick feeling squirming in her at the thought of Jaime Lannister, and her scalp tingles as though he's just let go of her hair. 

"My condolences to your family," Baelish says now, cocking his head to the side. "I admired Jon Arryn greatly. All of Boston is grieving the loss of such a good man." 

Tyrion's mismatched eyes are flicking between Jon and Sansa, like he is doing quick arithmetic in his head. Sansa carefully masters herself, giving away nothing. She smiles gratefully at the two men. 

"You're too kind. My father is filled with grief," she says politely. "As is my whole family." 

"All the more reason to dance," Tyrion muses, nodding back toward the Redwyne Rooms. "Kind of you to take Sansa out for an evening, Snow. I heard you two were close." 

Jon's face betrays nothing, just like Sansa's. 

"I suppose Eddard Stark prefers the devil he knows with his daughter," Baelish remarks slyly. 

"We're cousins, so I'm hardly a devil to Sansa," Jon counters, and he gestures for Sansa to step off the lift. "We've got a table reserved." 

"Oh, yes, of course. I'd hate to hold up your evening. We ourselves happen to have elsewhere to be as well," Tyrion says, with an odd look at Baelish. 

"A pleasure to meet you, Sansa Stark," Baelish says, as Sansa and Jon come to stand before them. He is a finger's width shorter than Sansa in her heels, she sees now. 

"You as well..." she pauses. 

"Call me Petyr," Baelish finishes for her with a sly grin. "Your mother always did." 

"I heard she called you Littlefinger," Jon contradicts coolly, and Sansa sees a flash of dislike on Baelish's face that is gone quick as it came. "Have a good night," he adds meaningfully. 

"Sláinte," Tyrion says dryly, and then Jon and Sansa are pushing past them into the Redwyne Rooms. 

It's like burying your face in a pillow of noise; it is instantly oppressive and suffocating. It's too warm, too dark, the smell of liquor too strong, the perfume and colognes too heavy. Jon helps Sansa out of her coat, but his cool eyes are on the closed door, an expression not so different from the one she'd glimpsed on Tyrion—like he is putting something together. 

How much did Tyrion and Baelish see? _I heard you two were close._ Where did he hear that? What did it mean? And if this man knew her mother so well, why doesn't she know him? Her palms feel clammy, but Sansa is careful to hide her distress as Jon hands her coat to the coat-check. When he turns around, his eyes glance over her dress. 

"It's bunched around your hips," he says in her ear, and she is glad it's too dark for her blush to be visible as she discreetly tugs the dress down, before walking with Jon toward one of the little tables. 

If Dionysus were a mortal man in Boston, this would indeed be his lair. Little tables draped in fine cloth are cluttered before a black stage, where a woman who glitters like she's drenched in starlight is singing. Her light is reflected in sprays about the dark club, catching on cigarette holders and fine wristwatches; rubies and sapphires and emeralds. Men in fine suits drape their arms around women with vixen lips and soft, shining hair.

But where is Loras Tyrell? 

There's a space before the stage, cleared for dancing that will come later. Perhaps that's when Loras will appear—when the trouble, as Theon called it, starts. 

Sansa sits at their little table while Jon goes to order them drinks. She means to focus on finding Loras, but her eyes can't settle on anything in this hedonistic paradise because she keeps thinking of Baelish and Tyrion's eyes, of how their faces had looked. How much did they see—and how much did they understand of what they saw? 

(And yet there's a rush of savage pleasure as she thinks of herself as a train careening off the tracks that have been laid down for her.)

(Perhaps she is as much of a little fool as Myranda.) 

(Sansa sits there thinking of the women she knows who have lost their heads over men—Cersei (rumored); Lysa; Myranda; for some reason she thinks of Theon, too, though he is a man and, of course, he hasn't lost his head over anyone—and feels a coil of shame. She wants to be like her mother, all crisply-tailored shoulders and masculine handwriting, but instead she is as soft and foolish as all of the women she so disdains.)

(She feels impoverished for joy; hungry as a begging dog.)

But then Jon sets the glasses on the rich white cloth and she sees those lovely hands and she feels herself sinking into that void all over again. There's nothing to be done about it but not look at him, ever again. 

(She will last approximately one minute, at most.)

"Thank you," she says, taking the Manhattan for herself as Jon lifts his dram of whiskey. 

"Sláinte," he says ironically, before tossing it back, and Sansa takes an un-ladylike gulp of the Manhattan to settle her nerves. The spirits burn her throat, but it's a cleansing fire. She avoids looking at Jon as she scans the room. 

"You looked suspicious," she observes, still on the hunt for doe-like eyes and soft, curly brown hair. 

"No one talks to Baelish unless they want to make a deal," Jon admits, and she wonders if his own shock has loosened his tongue slightly. She wants to look at him, to read his features, but she senses the danger is still too close at hand. "Lannister's a vein of cash and Baelish is a bloodhound." 

"Why'd my mother call him Littlefinger?" 

Jon says nothing for a long time. 

"Not for a woman's ears," he says at last. He sounds reluctantly amused, so she risks a quick look at him. He's staring at the dance floor in thought, his lovely mouth twisted in a smirk. "I think your Uncle Brandon came up with it."

They hardly ever speak Brandon's name; he is a cursed tale, and precisely the sort that Sansa fears. He is a dead end, a watery grave, a dark reminder that her family is not a normal one. The alcohol burns her stomach, so Sansa takes another sip. He is Jon's uncle, too, but of course he says _your uncle_ , like he is constructing a hasty wall between them. It feels more like a rickety fence, that will come down in the slightest wind. He struggles with it too; he is as God-fearing as she is in some ways, even if they're different ways. But there's no way to spin writhing against your own cousin in an elevator as anything other than a sin, and God's eyes extend even to Boston. 

(Her rosary is in her purse.) 

(But why bother?) 

Couples are starting to filter onto the dance floor, and Sansa watches them hungrily. What would she give to dance with Jon? It's a calculation she has made so many times, arithmetic she knows by heart, and it always comes out the same—the cost of a dance with Jon is everything, just as the cost of a kiss, of a touch, of any number of beautiful tiny glittering moments she might have with a lover. He would cost her everything. But sometimes—like now, when her head is turning fuzzy with liquor and she can scent his skin and her back still burns and crackles with his touch and the music is in her throat and hips—it seems like a price she would gladly pay. 

(He danced with her that night, in Paris.) 

(She knew, just for a moment, what happiness felt like.) 

(It feels like the hand of the man you love clasping yours; it feels like your face buried in the crook of his neck as you sway together to music that is in your minds; it feels like him holding you close to him, like you are something precious because you are yourself, not because you are someone's daughter or because you are pretty or because they've been told you're precious.)

"I'm looking for Loras Tyrell," she says, because she can't have happiness so at least she'll have control. 

"Figured," Jon admits behind his folded hands. He's finished his whiskey; she wonders if he needed it as bad as she did. "He comes here a lot."

"When the trouble starts, as Theon put it," Sansa agrees. She hears Jon scoff. 

"You know what kind of trouble?" 

"Drink? Dancing?" She shrugs and finishes her Manhattan, and that's when she sees him. 

Loras Tyrell is as lovely as his sister was—is?—as he slips through the room with a man. The man is tall but lean, arm slung around his waist, their heads bent together as though they are telling dirty jokes to each other. Loras' soft brown hair gleams even in the dim lighting. Sansa watches the two men go to a table in the corner, and Sansa realizes the other man is Renly Baratheon, the brother of the man Cersei married; the brother of her father's best friend. There's a crowd at that table, dangerous and stylish and beautiful as Renly is. He is Dionysus or Herod or the king of the Fae; Renly takes his throne at the center and Loras sits beside him. Renly's bowtie is undone, his handsome face flushed, and he's roaring with laughter as Loras whispers in his ear. 

Loras does not look like a man grieving his sister. He looks wild and happy, and Sansa watches as he throws back a glass of something clear. 

"What kind of trouble do you think?" Jon presses, watching Sansa watch Loras. He's got to lean in so she can hear him over the music, and his shoulder brushes hers. Under the table, his thigh brushes hers, and he pulls away after a moment, like he's got to tell himself to do it.

"He looks happy," she says simply. Renly punches Loras' shoulder, and everyone at the table is braying with laughter as Loras flushes, and then he's getting up with a sloppy-looking blonde, who looks like she can't quite believe her luck. And then she's pulling him to the dance floor, and they find each other's hands beneath the silvery lights, and they are dancing. 

"Dance with me."

"No." Jon lights a cigarette and does not explain; he does not need to. 

"Please." 

She looks at him now, meets his eyes through the diaphanous smoke. She swallows, watches his eyes follow the movement of her throat. "If you don't, I'll go over there and ask Renly Baratheon to dance with me." 

"I'm not worried about you dancing with Renly Baratheon," Jon retorts, after taking a long drag. Sansa gets to her feet. 

"Fine." 

It takes all of seconds: she approaches Renly's table, holding Renly's gaze all the while, and when she reaches his table he's already getting to his feet, bright blue eyes taking in her dress. 

"That dress is the color of poison," he's saying as he takes her by the arm, his grip almost painful, and leads her to the dance floor. She will not look at Jon; she will not. 

(Is he watching?)

(Why isn't he worried about her dancing with Renly?)

She turns to face Renly; he is even lovelier in the silvery light from the stage as his lips curve and he sets one hand on her hip, too low to be appropriate. 

"It's just green," she counters with a smile, as Renly effortlessly leads her into a swooning dance. He throws back his head and laughs at her. 

"Oh, it's never just green, with women. You're all two-faced little creatures, don't try and pretend otherwise." There is a sneering, disdainful contempt in his voice that makes her a little queasy. "Now, what did you want?" 

"Just a dance," she replies as he twirls her then brings her back with crisp, sharp movements that are almost cruel. 

It seems like Renly's eyes are trained on Loras and the blonde, though he never breaks eye contact with Sansa; it's a peculiar sensation, like he's got eyes in the back of his head and Sansa can see them. A many-faced god, one face always tilted toward Loras Tyrell. He arches his brows at her as his hand settles on her hip again. There's something bloodless about his touch. He does not want her, not even a little bit. "I want to talk to Loras," she admits. 

"Women always do," Renly scoffs over the music, his voice tinged with bitterness like a green leaf tinged with autumn. 

"I want to talk to him about his sister." 

Renly spins her again then brings her back with a snap, his mouth on her ear. 

"You can't. I won't let you." 

The next song is slower, and Renly holds her close as a lover as they slowly spin under the lights. Sansa glimpses Jon, smoking and watching her, and then he disappears and she's looking at Loras and the blonde. Loras is looking at them—at Renly. "I don't know what detective fantasy you're playing at," Renly continues in her ear, velvety lips brushing against the shell of her ear, but there's nothing sweet or heady about it. "But Loras hasn't talked to that—" he utters an unforgivable word that sounds like French on his lips— "in years. He can't help you, so fuck off, please." 

"Margaery is a woman of God, and she's a good person."

Renly laughs, low and bitter. 

"You think a habit and some beads makes a person good? You think sitting in a pile of rocks and colored glass once a week erases the bad things? You Catholics are hilarious. You think you can buy your way out of your sins." 

"You're Catholic. I've seen you take communion; my father was at your confirmation." 

"I'm as Catholic as you are." 

The song ends and Renly releases her. They break apart, each breathless. "Now run back to your daddy's dog and leave us alone." 

Sansa cannot help but glance at Jon again; through the bodies she sees him still sitting there, smoking, but his eyes are on Renly. Renly glances at Jon and smirks before looking back at Sansa. "I saw him beat a man bloody, once. The next day he was at church with the rest of your Winterfell lads, saying the Lord's prayer like he's got any right to it. And Margaery?" Renly steps closer and tilts Sansa's face up toward his. "She knows what she did." 

He steps back. "Go back to your daddy, Sansa Stone." 

Her skin prickles in spite of the humid heat of the dance floor, and then he's fading between bodies, disappearing, leaving her alone among the dancers. 


	7. oh where have you been, my blue-eyed son?

The night is saved by a bit of gossip from their waiter, impressionable and loose-lipped, after Sansa has slunk back to Jon, who has been watching with flinty eyes and a hard mouth; a raised chin, an inscrutable jaw. 

“You were dancing with Renly Baratheon,” the waiter remarks with awe, when he brings Jon and Sansa fresh drinks. “You know him well?”

Jon turns a cold eye on the waiter, but Sansa smiles. 

“Yes, extremely,” she says, because she can sense that this man might have something to offer her, whether he knows it or not. The waiter nervously slicks back his hair, some of his professional composure coming undone, and she realizes he thinks he can get something from her, too. 

“I heard the parties at his house in Winthrop last all night. Everyone misses church,” he gossips eagerly. “Do they really go so late?" he adds curiously, because he can't help himself. 

Sansa can feel Jon bristle beside her; he can read her mind exactly.

She turns her most radiant smile on this lad, and he awkwardly smiles back, looking slightly dazed.

“Even later,” she says, and slips a tip from her purse and offers it to him in a gloved hand. The waiter takes it, baffled and delighted, peering at Sansa with curiosity and maybe a little apprehension. 

(If he knew anything, he would have looked at Jon with that apprehension, but this is outside of Winterfell territory, and he looks young. Maybe not native to Boston; he sounds more like a New Yorker. He cannot be faulted for his innocence and his ignorance.)

When the waiter leaves at last, Jon and Sansa finish their drinks in silence. It is a staring match, a silent battle which will be fought in earnest once they leave, but neither is so foolish to show any sign of discord here—not where there might be watchful eyes and hopeful ears, looking for any chink in the armor of the Winterfell gang. Jon matches her gaze over his glass of whiskey, daring her to break eye contact, so she keeps her eyes on his, finishing her second Manhattan in a burning gulp without blinking. 

The alcohol goes to her head, burns her cheeks, makes the world lurch, but Jon stays stubbornly pale and unmoved, able to hold his liquor better than she can. She knows he can tell that she's drunk, and she knows that little droplet of power between them is slowly rolling back to him—and he knows it, too. He settles back into his chair with a smug air that infuriates her. He doesn't take that smug gaze off her even as he pays, handing the cash to their foolish, oblivious waiter without looking. 

(He can be as smug as he likes, she thinks, but it won't change her plans even a lick.)

(She has spent her entire life letting men think they know her, she thinks, and Jon is just a man, after all. He can be played just like the rest of them.)

( _No he can't_ , a little voice whispers, and she chooses to ignore it. _Yes he can, yes he can_.)

At last they leave. Jon helps her into her coat, his posture loose like he's won something, but it isn't until they're on the street, a block away from the club, that he finally tries to collect his winnings.

"You're not going to Winthrop."

The night is wet now, painting streaks of color across the inky streets. Sansa keeps walking, and a messy, tangled part of her revels in the fact that he walks behind her, eyes undoubtedly on her form. 

"But I am," she says at last, turning to face him as his strong grip closes round her upper arm. Then they're facing each other, and in the darkness, she sees not anger or condescension in his eyes, but caution. Hesitation. For the briefest flash, his guard is down, and she can see just how badly he wants to pull her closer, yet how much he knows he cannot. He is pale as the moon in the inky night and she is tidal, moved by him and him alone, and now she finds herself rushing toward some shoreline over which he rules; he is both moon and shore, driving her to devour him. “Not tonight,” she hedges, shaken by that look, “but tomorrow, for certain.”

Jon's walls come back up with haste; that hesitation is gone, or, at least, hidden, and she buries a stab of frustration. “If you’re so concerned," she continues, desperate to claw back the power for herself, "then take me to Winthrop yourself. You could keep watch over me. Make sure I don’t get into trouble.” 

They both know, of course, that he can't, that he _shouldn't_ ; though to articulate why this would be an impossibility would be to concede some of this cheap power, and it's all either of them has left. In so many ways, he's the worst trouble she could get into.

"You do whatever you want," he reminds her quietly, at last, "and I pay the price, every single time. One way or the other." 

(Why does this make her chest burn, her eyes throb?)

"Then don't pay it. It's simple." She pulls out of his grasp and looks away from him, casting around for some lifeline, any lifeline. "Let me go. Ask my father for other tasks. Pretend I don't exist."

"I can't," he says behind her, and she hears that note again, that crack in his walls. _You have hurt me and you will always hurt me_ , it says, and something squeezes her heart. She swallows, crossing her arms. 

“I’m going to Winthrop tomorrow,” she tells him, “and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

They say nothing on the car ride back, for there is nothing left to say. When he opens the car door for her, they do not look at each other, and they do not speak.

But something is cracked, something is irreparable. She has seen what lurks behind his walls—treasure just for her; a secret garden that belongs to her and her alone. 

(How much longer can she resist it?)

* * *

After Jon drops Sansa off at her boarding house, he returns to the Wolfshead, the base of his tether, like a dog slinking back to where its rope is tied.

It is a dangerous hour, a witching hour, and accordingly, the Wolfshead is glimmering and turbulent and dark behind fogged glass windows. Noisy and clamorous, churning and sloppy. Nothing good happens after this hour on a Saturday night at the Wolfshead. 

When he shoulders open the heavy wooden door, taking off his hat and smoothing his hair, it’s a raucous scene. The radio is still blaring, and men in shirtsleeves are yelling, laughing, playing cards and telling cruel jokes. There are a few averted gazes, a few stammered greetings, as Jon weaves through the throngs toward the back of the pub. But everyone is drunk by this hour, and the crowds don’t part for him like they normally would, if they could see straight and recall their own Christian names. Jon is fine with it; he has things to do, and tonight their fear of him tastes like copper on his tongue.

(What is he doing?)

(Who is he?)

(What has become of the ruin of his life?)

(He is so, so tired.)

In the back room, the older generation—Eddard, Catelyn, and others—are gone, and now it's just Robb, Theon, Jory, and some of the others, reduced to boisterous lads by drink and smoke and the heady glamor of knowing they will one day rule Boston. The room reeks of whiskey and beer, the air choked with smoke, as these lads play silly card games for dangerous stakes. The lights are low, shirtsleeves are up, and the table's littered with empty whiskey bottles and overflowing ash trays.

Just as Jon enters, Robb, flushed-face and sloppy, lets out a string of joyful, blue language as he slaps down a hand of cards. Jory bellows out a laugh and slings an arm around him; the other players at the table curse and groan, but they're still loose and grinning. 

But Greyjoy’s sharp face is still bruised and ruined, and there is a surly, dangerous tension between Robb and Greyjoy that Jon picks up on as soon as he enters the room. There is some ugliness there, evident in the sharpness of Theon’s smirk, all teeth and split lip and haunted dark eyes; obvious in the volume of Robb’s voice, the brashness of the way he slings his arm around Jory’s shoulders and pours them both another round. 

"Oh Jonny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling," Robb sings loudly, off-key, as the door swings shut behind Jon, earning hyena cackles. Jon does not smile or laugh, and Robb swiftly drops his attention, bored by Jon, just as Jon intended. 

Jon slides into a seat beside Jory, and the Irishman pours him a mouthful of whiskey. 

"You're late," Jory remarks, not bothering to cap the bottle as he glances at Jon. 

"Business," Jon says, lighting a cigarette. He wonders if Greyjoy's looking at him, but Greyjoy, of course, is still looking at Robb—and by looking at everything _but_ Greyjoy, Robb is really looking at Greyjoy. “Saw Tyrion Lannister and Littlefinger at the Redwyne Rooms tonight,” he continues. 

Jory taps his cigarette into an ashtray before looking back at Jon. 

“The hell were you doing there, lad?” 

“Business,” Jon repeats, and Jory laughs softly. 

“Not a place you ought to be doing that, Snow,” he says, barely audible amid the shouts and jeers around them. “Case in point—those two are regulars there.”

“Not together,” Jon points out.

Jory’s friendly brown eyes slide to Robb briefly. Jon wonders if he is concerned about Robb for the same reasons that Jon is; they have never acknowledged it, but Jory's got children and a life of his own, and Jon thinks the only thing keeping him out at this hour is that he carries the same nameless anxiety about leaving Robb alone that Jon does.

“Aye, not together,” Jory concedes at last, tearing his gaze from Robb. “But we don’t know—“

“We can guess,” Jon snaps impatiently. “Cassel, no one’s been placing bets with us recently, you noticed that?” 

“‘Cause no one gives two shits about the races anymore,” Jory says easily. “We all know that. Why’d’you think Ned’s pursuing other lines of income?” 

“I think they’re doing off-track betting somewhere else.”

Jory looks incredulous. 

“Jon,” he reasons, cocking his head, “not even the Lannisters are fool enough to do that. Not now we’ve got Myrcella.” 

But Jory’s eyes slide to Robb reflexively, just as Jon’s do. They only have Myrcella as long as Robb's got her. “And they hate Littledick as much as we do,” he adds, though his voice isn’t as confident. “Tyrion’s a sociable man, Snow,” he continues. “He drinks with even his enemies—perhaps especially his enemies.”

Jon says nothing more. Jory wants to believe the comforting lie, obviously. So he sits back and gulps down the finger of whiskey, and when his glass is refilled, he does it again, until that searing ache in his chest is blunted (though not lessened). 

Every Saturday night, it’s like this. Too much drink, too much smoke; the feeling of eyes on him wherever he is. Is it any wonder he throws himself into violence whenever it emerges? He has been caught in a holding pattern since the war. 

Eventually, the lads slip out, one by one. Greyjoy disappears without a word, and Robb's blue eyes are fixed on the door—well, as fixed as a drunk's can be—for half an hour after he goes.

And then, at long last, it's just Jon and Robb left, as Robb passes into that sleepy, maudlin kind of drunk that you can't come back from. The smoke has turned stale, and Jon just wants to go home and sleep this whole night off, but he knows he cannot leave Robb alone. 

"Fucking asshole," Robb slurs, head nodding, as he fumbles with a cigarette. Jon mutely lights it for him, watches Robb take a deep drag before leaning his bare elbows on the table and burying his face in his hands. 

"You need some water," Jon says, sliding a glass of water toward Robb, but Robb ignores it. He shakes his head, face still pressed into his hands. 

"'E's fucking," he begins, dropping a hand, and shaking his head again. "Can't." 

"It's time to go home, Robb," Jon says, setting a hand on Robb's back. His skin is burning through his once-crisp white shirt. 

"Yer," he slurs, dropping the cigarette into the ashtray and mopping his face with his hand. "'Cella's gonna."

He doesn't finish the sentence, merely attempts to get to his feet, and Jon has to leap up and prop him up. Robb collapses against Jon, but Jon has had so many years' experience in propping up an obscenely drunk Robb that he is prepared to catch him—but he is not prepared for the bitter tang that engulfs him when he catches his best friend. 

His best friend reeks of sex. His best friend, who has never so much as accepted a cheeky kiss from another woman, smells like ejaculate and a strong cologne that he does not wear.

It takes forever to get Robb into his coat and hat, then into the car. Robb's head lolls back, and he's still talking, but Jon can't follow any of it, and he's glad of it, because he is certain that Robb would not want him to.

Boston is a ghost town at this hour, the streets slick and lonely with rain and fog, that strange pre-dawn time when you really remember that Boston belongs to the sea, when the air is salty and everything feels blue and haunted like it's the depths of the ocean. In just a few hours he will drive back to Charlestown, and then on to Winthrop, because Jon knows who really owns him, and it's not God, not even on a Sunday morning. 

It's not that far to Robb's house, a brick rowhome with glossy black shutters and deep sash windows. There's a light on in the front parlor, golden through the fogged windows, and Jon recognizes Eddard's car parked in front of the house. 

"Look alive, Stark," Jon says with irony as he parks behind Eddard's car. "We're home." 

Robb has nearly blacked out, but he shakes himself out of it best he can. But Jon still must help him out of the car, and still must sling Robb's arm over his shoulders and wrap an arm around his lean waist, half-dragging him up the brick walkway to the front door. Robb's head lolls into Jon's neck as they stand on the front step. The door has been locked, and just by touching the handle, Jon can sense the feminine rage awaiting them. But Robb is the golden boy, the prince, the beloved one, so Jon will pay the price for his night, just like he always does. Jon wonders if he can get Robb into a bath before Myrcella smells him, as he fumbles through Robb's pockets for his keys. 

(Love is the tightest chain.)

(Why must he love?)

When Jon at last fishes the key out of Robb's pocket, Robb slaps a clumsy hand on the brick next to the door, and meets Jon's eyes. Bright blue in the darkness, alarmingly like Sansa's. For the moment there's a hook lodged in him. 

"You _know_ ," Robb says brokenly, the clearest he's been all night, and he pulls Jon in for a half embrace that reeks of grief. "And you hate me." 

"I don't," Jon says as Robb's cheek—just growing rough with four-am shadow—scrapes his own. Robb lets out a scoff of a laugh, tightening his hold as he lurches helplessly into Jon. 

"Don' hate me," he slurs, begging, fingers weaving into Jon's hair, knocking his hat off and into the wet rosebushes. "Please." 

"I don't, I couldn't," Jon promises, trying to counterbalance Robb's swaying as he reaches for the door. 

And then it happens. Robb pulls back just a breath, just enough for his nose to brush Jon's, and Robb's lips graze his as their foreheads meet. Jon is rooted to the spot in shock as Robb's eyelashes brush his. 

"Theon says you're a loyal dog," he slurs, grip tightening uselessly at the nape of Jon's neck, black hair slipping through his fingers, "that you'll do anything." 

"You need to get to bed," Jon says, reaching again for the key in the lock, but Robb sways into him again, laughing caustically, burying his face in Jon's wool-covered shoulder. 

"I need," Robb gasps, "this feeling. Away." His voice is muffled; Jon reaches the key at last and turns it in the lock, and the heavy black door swings open just as Robb collapses in earnest. 

It's easier now to move Robb. Their wet shoes squeak on the wooden floor of the narrow foyer; Jon drags Robb through, glancing into the parlor, but the light has since been turned out, and the room is empty. In the dark, they fumble their way up the stairs, quiet as Jon can possibly manage it, and Jon deposits Robb in the spare bedroom, dropping him onto the narrow twin bed with the hospital corners, taking off his coat and shoes, and leaving a glass of water on the little table beside him. 

"Thank you." 

The soft, feminine voice startles him; when Jon turns, Myrcella is there in the doorway like a pale, shimmering ghost, her long pale gold hair undone and her eyes red. Jon gets to his feet, raking a hand over his hair, conscious of how Robb has mussed his appearance, and they regard each other warily. But when Myrcella offers a miserable half-smile, the balloon is punctured, and they each look away. She lets out a soft laugh, self-consciously touching her hair—and then, all of a sudden, she is crying. 

He does not know what to do, and he is so tired. 

"Myrcella," he begins, hoping some stroke of brilliance will hit him, but she shakes her head, wiping her eyes. 

"The mistress is supposed to get the romance," she says thickly, "but I just get the loneliness and misery." 

(He does not disagree that she is the mistress, the _other_ one, the one that Robb loves on the side.)

Jon swallows. He cannot bring himself to embrace Myrcella, though when she looks up and meets his eyes, her gaze raw and wet, he knows that is what she wants. But he can't, he won't. Robb is wrong: he won't do just _anything_. He is loyal to Robb, yeah, but only one person owns him. 

"You should sleep," he says at last, and her face crumples. She turns and flees back to their bedroom, and shuts the door with a soft click. 

In the blue darkness, Jon is alone, and exhaustion hits him like a train. He descends the steps with light feet, and goes to the front door. His hand is on the cool knob when he feels the press of a gun to the back of his head, the steel cool through his hair.

He stands rigid, swallows. He hears a click, then a shuddering gasp. 

"If you breathe a word," Catelyn begins in a whisper, and Jon closes his eyes. 

"I don't know what you're talking about," he says, and she scoffs, the movement digging the gun harder into the back of his head for a moment. 

"You do." She presses the gun harder against his skull. "You know exactly what I'm talking about. You will not ruin his life." 

(Who is he, that his aunt is pressing a gun to the back of his head at four in the morning?)

(Just a few years ago he was a hero, kissing the woman he loves in Paris.)

He is gripped by a sudden, powerful need to see Sansa. To pull her close, to forget this life, to watch her spin and weave fairytales for him in the warm dark of a bedroom that belongs to just them, somewhere far away from all of this.

It makes his chest tighten and ache to let this old fantasy flash in his mind's eye, for he has been avoiding it so studiously for so many years. He is so tired—tired of guns and whiskey and late lonely nights where he cleans up messes he only half-understands. Tired of worrying about Lannisters and bets and Italians and horses and the police and the papers. Tired of waiting to feel alive every weekend as he lurches toward more inevitable violence, tired of the equally inevitable hollowness that fills him every Sunday as he files into church with the others. 

"Catelyn," he says softly, "I don't want to tell anyone." 

He knows she would never pull the trigger, for so many reasons, but his heart is still pounding thickly in his ears, and he is powerfully aware of the hot blood coursing through him. His vision seems to shake with every thudding beat of his heart, and his mouth is dry, so he licks his lips as he hears Catelyn let out a trembling breath. 

She lowers the gun, and he slowly looks back at her over his shoulder. "How did you find out?" he wonders, because if she knows without witnessing these late nights with whiskey and smoke and cards, then others will know, too. 

She laughs, to his surprise, though it is humorless. 

"You think I don't know my own son?" she breathes, eyes glinting silver. "You think I don't feel his every ache as my own, burn with his every joy, suffer with his every pain?" 

_You don't know your daughter_ , Jon thinks, and he averts his eyes again so she won't have a chance to read his disagreement in his eyes. He faces forward again. "To be a woman is just to feel the pain of the men you love; to suffer for them in silence," she continues, seething. "Count yourself lucky you were born a man." 

Jon does not disagree, or voice the irony he finds in her words. He closes his eyes and turns the knob. 

"Goodnight, Catelyn," he says heavily, and he leaves her standing there, barefoot and damp-eyed, in her son's foyer, holding a gun in her shaking, gloved hands.


	8. all the crying girls

When Sansa steps out early the next morning, mere hours after Jon wordlessly dropped her off, Jon is waiting at the curb for her, leaning against his idling car just like she knew he would be. 

"Not a long drive to Winthrop," Jon remarks as he opens the door for her. His hair is slightly mussed, like he combed it in a hurry, like he was too distracted to look in the mirror.

(Is this her fault?)

"You might tell me what's got you so bothered," she remarks as they pull away from the curb.

"Nothing's bothering me."

Getting Jon to talk has always been a bit of a dance, and manipulation on both sides is a requisite. She must strike then pull back; he feints, and feints, and feints—and then pulls the rug from under her and lets her in. She stumbles forward and falls into his depths every time.

"I suppose that's just your face, then." But Jon doesn't take the bait. 

So they drive. The watery dawn, doused in fog, becomes shot through with gold and copper as the sun begins to rise in earnest, over salty rock and grim shoreline.

"You know which house is his?" Jon asks after they cross the bridge. She can see the cast-iron silhouette of the Deer Island lighthouse in the distance, smeary and lost in the fog, which means they're getting close.

"Theon gave me the address," she admits, giving Jon the street and number. "I called him this morning. ...He also told me to come looking for trouble at the Suffolk Downs today."

She watches Jon rub at his forehead, pushing his hair back. He doesn't even seem to take in her words, though she saw his fists clench on the wheel at Theon's name. "He sounded as ill as you look," she adds, another line tipped with bait and tossed toward him, and he bristles with irritation as they roll to a stop in front of a large house.

"You want to pick a fight? I'll give you a fight," he warns her in a low voice.

"Anything would be better than this cold shoulder," she shoots back as their eyes meet. "Jon, what _happened_?"

His lips press together, hard, and he looks away. Something did happen; he is keeping something from her. She watches him work his jaw and rub his fingertips along his lower lip thoughtfully, the way you might after a kiss, and a lump forms in her throat.

Of course he would kiss someone else. He is a man, after all, and she's kissed someone else too. She doesn't own him; he is smoke and she can only breathe him in, and any snatches to hold him only disperse him further. Her vision blurs and her surroundings briefly turn to silver. She is ashamed that she would cry now, over this, but the thought of him kissing someone else—she masters herself, turning to ice, before she speaks again. "Who was it?"

"What?" He sounds jarred, genuinely surprised. He's an even better liar than she realized.

"Who did you kiss last night?"

She watches his brows draw together.

"Sansa, you don't—" he begins, but she can't bear it.

"Never mind."

She gets out of the car, leaving Jon sitting there in all his smoke and distraction, and walks up to the front door, heels clacking wetly on the damp sidewalk, a wet clack with every beat of her throbbing, lonely heart.

Jon has kissed someone else.

Jon has kissed someone else.

Does Jon love someone else?

(Oh but she feels like such a fool, like the silliest girl in the world, and only Jon can make her feel this way.)

(Is it not inevitable, that a man only loves you _until_ he has learned all your mysteries? Is this not what all the heartbreak songs, all the crying girls in the back seats of cabs have cautioned her against? That men so inevitably tire, that they move onto the next glowing pink sweet thing after taking one bite from you?)

(She is such a fool.)

The Baratheon house sits on the beach, fine cars scattered around it like toys. It's large and breezy, all white siding and glossy shutters and overflowing hydrangea that must be voluptuous in the summertime. Winthrop is still asleep around them, and the house is like a napping dog, curled against the sand but bristling with potential—it is only asleep for now.

She lifts the heavy brass knocker, and listens to the silence—but then there are footfalls, and suddenly Loras is opening the heavy front door to her, his hair wild and his face wan. He's wearing an elegant dressing gown that looks too large to be his, as it hangs loose on his lean form; Sansa guesses it in fact belongs to Renly, who is taller and broader. In the harsh morning light, Loras is all soft curls and sharp clavicles and dark circles beneath pretty eyes.

"Sansa Stark."

His voice is sweet, soft, like a choir boy's. He was an altar boy back in childhood, and when he was bathed in the light from stained glass he did always look angelic, as angelic as he looks now. She remembers not being able to take her eyes off him when she was younger. His fawn-brown eyes rove over her grey dress, her dyed hair. "You're a bit late, I'm afraid. The party's mostly over."

It has the wording of a jovial greeting, but his voice is dry as a death rattle, and he looks ill from his hangover. His eyes are red-rimmed in the way Sansa is certain hers will be, later, when she has a moment of privacy.

(Jon has kissed someone else.)

"I'm here to speak with you. About your sister, Margaery." She pauses, because she can sense Loras withdrawing, and she can hear the slam of the car door—Jon is coming, and then this will all be over. (Jon has kissed someone else, Jon has kissed someone else, Jon has kissed someone else.) "Renly said she... did something... to you before she disappeared," she adds quickly. "He said, 'she knows what she did.' And I think I might know something about her disappearance and wanted to hear—"

Loras stumbles back, his lovely face flushing.

"Get out—"

In a flash, Jon is there, stopping Loras from slamming the door in her face with a strong hand, and even Loras stills at the look on Jon's face. He warily regards Jon, who looks wilder than he usually does, with a lock of hair fallen forward across his forehead and his eyes cold and grey as the Atlantic this morning.

"You'll answer her questions and then we'll leave."

The two men stare each other down. There have always been rumors of Loras' temper, his violence. He was such a sweet boy and became such an angry man, everyone knows it, and if it were any other man, Jon would be in danger—but Jon is violent and dangerous, too, and there is a reason that Robb keeps him so close. Sansa watches Loras' eyes trace over Jon's form, lingering on his pockets, on his scars. Jon allows him to look.

(The thing is, Jon is a war hero and Loras is not, and Jon is one of the Winterfell lads, and Loras is not.)

(You don't say 'no' to Jon Snow.)

(Obviously, Sansa never has.)

"Fine." Loras at last relents, stepping away from the door and gesturing for them to enter. "You have five minutes."

Loras leads them into the sleeping house. Even his bare feet are elegant against the polished hardwood floors, the heels flushed, the arches soaring. The tie of the robe trails down along the floor as he walks, emerald silk slithering like a serpent behind him.

The house is dark, and has a thick, sour odor of early morning in a pub. As they pass the parlor, Sansa glimpses three sleeping women lying tangled on the floor, amid scattered silk cushions and draped in half-worn velvet and taffeta dresses; strings of pearls taut at their necks and scattered high heels. A boy in a tuxedo, flushed-face and blonde, sleeps at the piano with abandon, and Sansa abruptly recognizes him as Lancel Lannister—another altar boy with a sweet voice and rosy cheeks. In the foyer, a garter hangs from a little frosted-glass chandelier, and Loras quickly ducks to pick up an empty bottle of champagne that has been left on the floor, the hardwood sticky and mottled around it from a spill, the gold foil flaking from its fluted neck.

"We can talk in here," Loras says when they reach a narrow, galley-style kitchen. Pallid light comes in through high windows, and it smells of coffee and cigarettes. Loras shuts the door behind them. "Well?"

He lights a cigarette and drops into one of the little white wooden chairs.

"I've come to talk to you about your sister—about all of the nuns that have gone missing," Sansa begins carefully, watching Loras' face, but he's focused on taking a long drag from his French cigarette.

"I haven't seen her in years," he dismisses. "And I know nothing about why she, or any of the other sisters went missing."

In spite of the acid in his voice, Sansa can see that Loras is in pain: the lovely hand holding the cigarette trembles; his eyes scrunch, briefly, like he doesn't want to cry. "Marg and I had a falling-out many years ago, and we stopped speaking. Before the war." His left leg bounces up and down as he avoids Sansa and Jon's eyes.

"What was the falling-out over?"

Loras flinches.

"Stupid nonsense," he mutters, and his free hand fists on the table, raw knuckles that are flushed against his pale skin, chapped and bruised like he's hit someone recently. "So fucking rich that she up and became a _nun_ , with her record," he continues with an acidic scoff, shaking his head, making his chestnut waves toss and gleam in the light. "Biggest slut this side of the Atlantic, and she had the nerve..."

Sansa glances at Jon, but he's watching Loras carefully, his head tilted, eyes narrowed. He seems to sense her gaze, for he flicks his eyes up at her, but she cannot bear to meet his eyes.

"Had the nerve?" Sansa prompts Loras, and although it is rude, she takes a seat across from him at the little round table without invitation. She leans forward, arranging her features into their most sympathetic. She knows angry men; she knows how to bend them without breaking them. Loras' eyes become red and wet, and his mouth quivers as he looks somewhere she cannot go.

"To tell me who to love. To tell me that my love was fake, that it was only a product of..." he trails off, shaking his head bitterly.

"Love is real, all of it," Sansa reassures Loras, thinking, with pain, of her night in Paris with Jon. However quickly he might have discarded it, she cannot let go of such a precious memory, and her chest is tight as she tries not to think of Jon kissing anyone else. (Jon has kissed someone else. Jon has kissed someone else.)

Loras looks up at her with bright, hopeful eyes.

"Don't you think so?" he breathes, leaning forward, abandoning his cigarette. His eyes are shining as he reaches for Sansa's gloved hand, and she lets him take it. His grip is almost painfully tight, and Jon steps forward, a shadow in her periphery, and she ignores him. Why does he pretend to care for her well-being if he's been kissing someone else? Was it a false kiss like her kiss with Theon, or was it—she pushes it aside. She can't think of this right now. "No matter what's happened to me, I'll always know my love is real."

She senses she is on the brink of something with Loras, and she must tread cautiously. She squeezes his hand back, studying his damp eyes, the way the long, soft lashes cling together. He is such a strikingly beautiful man that it is easy to forget he is violent, dangerous, and above all, very, very angry.

(But what is Loras so angry about?)

"What happened to you, Loras?" she breathes. "What did your sister do—"

It happens in a crash: Loras draws back sharply just as the kitchen door swings open, revealing Renly; Loras is already on his feet, flushing up from his neck to his hairline, and Renly's bright blue eyes take in the scene with disgust. He's barefoot as well, wearing the trousers of his suit from the night before and his white shirt, unbuttoned and stained with wine and other things.

"Get out," he says softly, his gaze settling on Sansa with utter dislike. All of the features that add up to a gamely, friendly, clever presence now are twisted with anger, and there is none of the friendliness of Renly Baratheon in his eyes now. The look is cold and dead; if Jon were not here, Renly would hurt her.

"I came to—"

"—I don't care why you came," he continues just as calmly. Loras seems to be struggling to breathe, and when Sansa looks, she feels a jolt of horror as she watches him crouch down on the tiled floor, gripping at his hair and shaking violently, reminding her of that fervor that overtakes some men who were once soldiers. "Get out."

"I'm so sorry, Loras, I didn't mean—"

She reaches for the trembling man in a moment of blind comfort; Renly is faster and lifts his hand to strike her; Jon is fastest and stops Renly—there is a brutal scraping sound as Renly is shoved against the table and Sansa is knocked aside—in the background, Loras struggles and wheezes for air—Renly shoves Jon, hard—"you dare raise a hand—" Jon growls—"you dare come here and do that to him—" Renly seethes back—"stop!" Sansa pleads—Loras disappears through the doors—

And then the three of them are left in silence, breathing heavily. Jon's lip is split and Renly will surely have a black eye; the two men stare at each other. Renly's dark hair is mussed and hangs in thick clumps across his forehead as he regards Jon warily.

"How you feel about her—" he nods jerkily toward Sansa, "—is how I feel about him, and the next time she hurts him, she's dead."

"She would never hurt him," Jon says evenly, fixing Renly with that killer's stare, as he takes a warning step toward him, lifting his chin that is streaked with blood. Renly scoffs.

"Yet she has. As interfering as her mother and as arrogant as her father," Renly says in a low, scathing voice. "Do you have any idea of how he's suffered? Any idea of what they've done to him? No, you don't; you're Starks—lest I need remind you that you two are in fact related—so you don't suffer like the rest of us. You watch your races and drink your whiskey and put on your perfume but there's something rotten here in Boston, something foul, and it's on your heads."

Renly reaches for his pocket then, and at once, Jon is pressing a gun to his temple. Renly withdraws his cigarettes and a fine lighter from his pocket, looking amused at Jon. "Fine, go ahead. Your days are numbered anyway, Snow, just like mine are, and you know it."

He lights the cigarette as though a gun isn't digging into the flesh at his handsome temple, and his bright eyes alight on Sansa. "And you," he says more softly, "the girl in grey. The princess of Winterfell. Now you've decided you'd like to come down from your tower and have a little adventure, is that it? You might not like what you find when you start turning over the rocks around your precious tower."

"I think I've seen the rotten thing in Boston," Sansa counters softly. Renly studies her before letting out a mouthful of smoke.

"Did you look in a mirror?" he snarks, and rolls his eyes when Jon digs the gun harder into his head. "Get out and don't come back. I'll have no Stark blood in my house. I'll play nice elsewhere, as I have no choice, but make no mistake, I'm not a fawning Stark sycophant."

Jon lowers the gun after he's certain Renly won't lunge again, and they watch Renly leave the kitchen and follow where Loras went. In the next room, they hear soft words of reassurance, of soothing, and Sansa realizes, at last, why Jon was so unconcerned about Renly dancing with her last night.

They leave the house on numb feet.

Sansa stumbles down to the beach, blindly, the sea air whipping her hair free of its careful styling. Her hat flies off and is swept down the beach, but she makes no move to save it as she clambers along the dunes, feeling like a wild and trapped animal. Sand slips into her shoes; the raw winds chap her cheeks and rattle her bones. She does not realize she is finally crying until she reaches the water, foam and froth and bits of the sea, and she stands there, chest aching and eyes wet, staring into the blurred grey distance. She feels more than sees Jon stand beside her.

"What is it my family has done?"

She scrunches her eyes shut, clenches her fists, waiting to hear whatever it is, but the blow doesn't come. When she looks at Jon, he is staring helplessly at the horizon.

"I don't know," he admits, lost. "I don't know what Baratheon meant about any of it."

"Did you know about him? And Loras?"

"Of course. Everyone knows," he says carelessly, with a shrug. But there's something avoidant in his eyes, and he turns from her, hands shoved in the pockets of his fine wool coat, the hem flapping about his strong legs, and she watches helplessly as he takes a few anxious steps. She thinks of his thumb brushing his lip, of the way he leapt between her and Renly, of the helplessness in his brow now. She thinks of how Renly said, _your days are numbered anyway, Snow, just like mine are, and you know it_.

Jon has kissed someone else and his days are numbered and Renly Baratheon hates her family and Loras Tyrell is scarred, scared, and angry.

It is all too much to bear. She breaks.

"Who kissed you?" she blurts out, desperate and pathetic as a woman, her words nearly lost on the salty wind, desperate and pathetic just as her mother tried to never let her be. "Tell me."

Jon looks back at her over his shoulder, and the look in his eyes both confirms her fears and denies them. So she takes another step forward, her traitorous heart cracking. Somehow, amid everything, this is the one thing that matters. "Who kissed you?" she screams, and Jon breaks.

They meet in the middle and she launches herself into his embrace, painful, violent, angry, lost. "Who kissed you," she demands again in a choked voice, batting at his chest, her eyes filling with tears and her throat closing up, and he only tightens his hold. "Who was it, who was—"

"—Sansa," he says into her hair, "Robb's having an affair with Theon."

She stills in his arms.

They sway, her arms bloodless, as she almost suffocates, sinking into him, like they are a deck of cards being shuffled together. "He's in a bad way, he's falling apart," Jon continue. His walls are briefly down, and she rushes in like the sea and he lets her in. "He kissed me last night. I think it's killing him."

"Does anyone else know?"

"...Everyone knows, I think," he says after a moment.

The wind is harsh, and they sway together as though dancing, as the sand shifts beneath them. She knew it, too, she thinks; there's no such thing as a secret, after all. You can sense the truth, you can feel it, you can glimpse it. You can taste the smoke when there's a fire. 

"They're ...together?" 

"Yeah, they were last night. I don't know how long it's been going on."

_All their lives_ , she thinks. She is thinking of Giselle reflected in Jon's grey eyes, she is thinking of how he looked in uniform, she is thinking of the vase she carried from Paris.

Why is it that the physical part of love is the most abhorrent when it is only the tip of the iceberg, when it is only the final gate, when it is the most insignificant piece? This thing between her and Jon... its roots stretch back all their lives. It is the only way in which Jon does not own her, and to deny herself passage through this final gate seems so pointless, so foolish, so hypocritical. 

Besides... everyone already knows anyway.

"Show me what it's like," she whispers before she can change her mind, and Jon cradles her face and their eyes meet.

She is thinking of the lilt of Renly's voice as he soothed Loras, of the way Jon's thumb brushed against his pretty lip; of the glow in Cersei's cheeks when she looks at her brother. "You already own me in every other way."

Chapped by the wind, Jon's lower lip looks red as an apple. She watches the battle happen in his eyes, the battle between right and wrong, the battle between what he wants and what he feels he owes the world. His thumb brushes her lip and she knows the instant he has lost the battle within himself.

(She holds no serpent; she is the serpent, and she has control of him. Yet when he ducks his head and kisses her, she knows that she is the one on a leash.)

"Alright," he says against her mouth, "alright. You win."


End file.
